Ipso proves impotent at curbing the Mail's climate misinformation;
Independent Press Standards Organisation lets the Mail on Sunday's misleading and incorrect climate claims stand

BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1057 words

David Rose is a writer for the UK tabloid Mail on Sunday, and is known for his inaccurate and misleading climate change coverage. Rose is particularly fond of cherry picking data to hide the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice. In August 2014, he published a piece focusing on the fact that at the time, there was more sea ice in the Arctic than during the record-breaking summer of 2012. Rose's misguided focus on noisy short-term data is underscored by the new record low winter Arctic sea ice extent we experienced this year, less than seven months after his piece was published.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, filed a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation ( Ipso ) about Rose's piece. Ipso is intended to police the UK print media. It replaced the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in this assignment after the latter was roundly criticised for failing to take action in the News of the World phone hacking affair. Ipso describes itself as,

the independent regulator of the newspaper and magazine industry. We exist to promote and uphold the highest professional standards of journalism in the UK, and to support members of the public in seeking redress where they believe that the Editors' Code of Practice has been breached ... IPSO is here to serve the public by holding publications to account for their actions.

The first clause in the Editors' Code of Practice deals with accuracy of the Press and includes the following provision.

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

Bob Ward's complaint alleged that Rose and the Mail had violated this section of the Code on several points, for example by giving the impression that the long-term decline in Arctic sea ice had reversed and by claiming that polar bear populations aren't declining. On each point, Ward was correct that Rose's piece is at best misleading, and often factually incorrect. Nevertheless, yesterday Ipso ruled in favor of Rose and the Mail.

On the Arctic sea ice decline, Rose covered himself by quoting contrarian climate scientist Judith Curry, who allegedly told him,

The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.

This claim is entirely false, as the data in the following video illustrates.

Rose also quoted climate scientist Ed Hawkins saying, in understated fashion,

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of people saying the ice has bounced back

So Ipso ruled that by including these comments from two climate scientists, Rose " had made clear that scientific opinions regarding the significance of the most recent data varied. " In this specific case, most of the fault lies with Judith Curry for providing Rose with a misleading and scientifically indefensible quote.

However, on several other points, Rose's piece was simply factually wrong. For example, it claimed,

Yet even when the ice reached a low point in 2012, there was no scientific evidence that bear numbers were declining

As Ward pointed out in his complaint, the Polar Bear Specialist Group has reported that several polar bear sub-populations are declining. Specifically, in the group's latest report, they found that three sub-populations are declining, six are stable, one is increasing, and nine lack sufficient data. For example, one recent study found that the number of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea has declined by approximately 40% over the past decade.

Polar bear survival is strongly tied to the abundance of sea ice, which they rely upon to hunt seals. While Arctic sea ice as a whole is declining rapidly, in some areas it has remained stable, depending upon local geographic conditions. In areas with stable sea ice, polar bear sub-populations have also generally remained stable.

However, sea ice in other regions has declined, and the local polar bear sub-populations along with them. The long-term outlook is bleak for both Arctic sea ice and polar bears, including in most regions where the ice has so far remained stable. Uncurbed global warming will eventually melt the ice, even in currently stable regions.

In any case, there was scientific evidence in 2012 that several polar bear sub-populations had declined. Ipso ruled in Rose's favour because he wrote,

the main international bear science body, the Polar Bear Specialist Group, admits it has no reliable data from almost half of the Arctic, so cannot say whether numbers are falling or rising.

However, this is different from claiming that there is no scientific evidence that polar bear numbers are declining. The data show that three sub-populations are declining, and some very rapidly. In short, Rose has confused a lack of data from some sub-populations with "no evidence" of population decline. The latter is simply untrue. The available data are very concerning, which is why polar bears are listed as a threatened species.

Rose also took comments by Al Gore out of context, and plotted Arctic sea ice extent data for the period 2004-2014 while claiming the "melt has slowed over 10 years". Ward raised issue with both points, in the latter case noting that if we consider the long-term data, the Arctic melt has actually accelerated over the past decade (as illustrated in the above video).

In both cases Ipso ruled that because Gore was quoted correctly and the data were plotted correctly, the fact that they were cherry picked and taken out of context did not violate the code. Given that the editor's code prohibits the publication of misleading and distorted information, this ruling seems incorrect and indefensible.

In short, Rose has cracked the Ipso code. In order to publish misleading articles without repercussions, British tabloids need only to include scientifically indefensible quotes from contrarian scientists, and to accurately represent the information that they've misleadingly cherry picked. Sadly, Ipso seems as toothless to curb climate misinformation as the PCC before it.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

In vast swaths of rural New South Wales, there's only one election issue: coal seam gas;
CSG is a big vote swinger in the country, with many communities declaring themselves 'gasfield free'. This is not just about the environment, writes our reporter: it's also about people wanting to be heard

BYLINE: Gay Alcorn

SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS

LENGTH: 4063 words

Bruce Shearman has handed out how-to-vote cards for the National party for 50 years. It has been a big part of his life, a big part of his identity. He has a certificate proving his 40-year party membership. He was the president of the Lismore branch on New South Wales's north coast, until he quit a few years ago, and a personal friend of local MP Thomas George. When he and his wife, Nola, built their dream home three years ago on their cattle property, George and his wife gave them a rose to plant in their new garden.

"I have known Thomas for 50 years," Shearman says. "We used to play cards together and one thing and another, but good friendships sometimes disappear. It's been a sad time for us."

On Saturday, Shearman, still a farmer at 78, won't be encouraging voters to stick with the Nationals. He is too old-fashioned to disclose how he will vote himself, but he believes the Greens will get most support in Lismore, held by the Nationals by a normally impenetrable margin of 24.3%. One issue has shaken Shearman's entire political outlook and is defining this election in large swaths of country NSW: the fight to stop coal seam gas.

Before Shearman resigned as president at Lismore, he and Nola drove to Chinchilla in Queensland to look at its CSG operation. He decided that gas wells and water treatment ponds and endless trucks and dust didn't suit the lush green hills of Lismore, with its small farms and bad roads. He came home and reported what he had seen to the Nationals, but says the party didn't want to listen.

"I'm very much against CSG. I don't want them invading our land and transforming our land whatsoever. I went to see the local member, spoke at meetings, but all he would do is change the subject." Nola, also a Nationals member for more than 40 years, adds: "We've got to stop it from coming here, once it's here it's here."

The Shearmans' story can be interpreted in several ways. Maybe they're "nimbys" - they have a CSG exploration licence over their 130-hectare property just outside Lismore. Maybe CSG is not right for the far north coast - the northern rivers, as it's known, with its beauty, tourism, farms, and history of environmentalism - but might be better suited elsewhere. Maybe the Nationals got caught between backing miners and farmers and lost support of even diehard supporters because they didn't pick up early enough how big this was getting.

The bigger picture

Maybe there's something else going on. The prominent climate change activist Naomi Klein writes in her new book This Changes Everything that "resistance to high-risk extreme extraction (such as CSG) is building a global, grassroots, and broad-based network the likes of which the environmental movement has rarely seen ... suddenly no major new project, no matter how seemingly routine, is a done deal".

Klein argues the big picture - that sustained and successful local revolts are not really about the environment, but about democracy, where people of vastly different backgrounds insist on having a real say about the crucial resources of air, land and water where they live. She outlines examples all over the world, including protests against Whitehaven Coal's mine at Maules Creek in northern NSW.

The state election has barely touched on Klein's thesis, of course. Nor is it caught up with the now routine reports concluding that that 80% of the world's fossil fuels will need to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid warming more than two degrees by mid-century (although gas gets off more lightly than coal, with half needing to stay in the ground, according to one report.)

This is a parochial state election about the privatisation of poles and wires, health, education, jobs, the aftermath of corruption scandals and the unpopularity of the Abbott federal government.

Related: Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges

But the regional uprising over CSG is more about an unconventional gas source where the gas is held tightly in coal seams saturated with water and where sophisticated technology is used to release it. Large numbers of wells are drilled, and water is pumped out to allow the gas to flow. The process was first used commercially in Queensland in 1996 and in the US since the 1970s - but it is still relatively immature in Australia.

There are all the implications of what that technology might mean practically for regional communities, but there are bigger issues here, too: the urgency of climate change compared with the short-term necessities of politics, and the growing demand of people to be listened to.

A watershed moment

The immediate goal for those against CSG is to stop it before it takes hold in NSW. "We are at a watershed with CSG," say Paul Spooner, local councillor, general manager of the Byron Bay community centre, and Labor's candidate for the far north coast seat of Ballina. This is a seat first contested in 1988 that has been held by one man since for the past 27 years - the retiring member Don Page.

A recent poll says that, despite its 24.6% margin on paper, it could fall to Labor with Green preferences on this issue - even though there are no known CSG reserves in Ballina and only a small slice of the electorate is covered by an exploration licence. Nearby Lismore and Tweed, both held by the Nationals with margins of more than 20%, are also vulnerable to Labor and Green challenges and do have exploration licences over big chunks of them.

Spooner hands out his literature at a local farmers market at the town of Bangalow, beautifully green and hip. He compares the intensity of the mood to the battle to save Tasmania's Franklin dam in the early 1980s. "This election is a referendum on CSG on the north coast."

Now that the election is almost here, everyone seems to be willing to listen hard to what people think about CSG, which leaves those who have been fighting for years sceptical.

"The people of the Lismore electorate have continually made it clear to me that they do not want CSG here," George said a few days ago. Nationals Ballina candidate Kris Beavis says he will fight the Coalition if it supports CSG in his electorate. "I've basically said from day one that I don't think it's appropriate for our area ... if that makes me distinctive from the party, so be it."

Tweed Nationals MP Geoff Provest told the ABC the Coalition had a "plan to make the north coast coal seam gas-free", a statement that surprised many. These Nationals suddenly face serious resistance - with a concerted campaign, and lots of posters - urging people to "put the Nationals last".

Across the state, there is barely any CSG production now, and nothing at all on the north coast. Only the Camden project in western Sydney is in full swing, accounting for 5% of the state's gas needs. In Queensland, the industry is huge, with CSG providing 90% of domestic gas needs, with the NSW government warning of possible gas shortages in the state as Queensland gas is diverted to the Asian export market. There's nothing happening in Victoria, with a moratorium in place since mid-2012 and the new Labor government pledging a parliamentary inquiry before any change.

Regulations changes and community resistance

On this issue, NSW is the national battleground to see whether this industry's retreat will accelerate. The government has pegged back explorations that covered close to half the state when Labor was in power to about 11%, although critics say the buybacks have been mostly in non-active areas. Two big projects have been declared strategically important for energy needs, but have been plagued by delays, regulations changes and community resistance. AGL's Gloucester gas project north of Newcastle has approval to begin, and Santos's Narrabri gas project in the Pilliga forest in the north-west is at the appraisal stage, soon to submit its environmental impact statement.

Until very recently, these two projects appeared to have broad bipartisan political support, although both are controversial. The state government in January suspended AGL's operations near Gloucester after the company detected banned chemicals in two wells and a water storage tank. Its operations are under review.

Related: NSW election diary: parties face hostile environment in fight for green vote

The spiritual heart of opposition to CSG in NSW is in the northern rivers region, centred in Lismore. Up here, people are obsessed, with daily coverage in newspapers, and street stalls, fund-raisers and ubiquitous anti-CSG posters. The biggest of all is against Metgasco's licence 15km from Lismore. In May last year, this was the site of the anti-CSG movement's most significant stand, and most significant victory, and a dawning sense that an unlikely group of farmers, locals, Aboriginal elders and activists could win against a mining company with political support.

Hundreds of protesters who had camped out to block Metgasco's drilling operation were due to be confronted and removed by about 800 police. Instead, there were hugs and cheers when the confrontation was avoided - the minister for energy and resources, Anthony Roberts, suspended Metgasco's drilling licence for lack of community consultation, a decision that infuriated the company, which is now challenging it in court.

Among the crowd that day was Adam Guise, who grew up on a farm, has worked as an adviser for the Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, and was then a spokesman for Gasfield Free Northern Rivers. Guise was heckled a little at a candidates' forum last week - one questioner demanded why the Greens wanted non-human animals designated as "beings" and declared that farmers who voted Green would be "putting a noose around your neck'' - but nobody takes his candidacy lightly.

Only the Greens would ban CSG entirely in the state, and have always objected to it on the north coast, even when the issue was dismissed as a fringe concern. "The Greens are the only ones that have stood up for our farmland," Guise said. "The others are playing catch-up now a week from the election."

And so they are. "Sink the Nats and that's the end of coal seam gas forever," NSW Labor's leader, Luke Foley, told a crowd at the site of the blockade this week. "It won't take riot police, it will take the power of the ballot box."

Gasfield free

Aidan Ricketts is a law lecturer at Southern Cross University, an environmental activist and strategist for the Gasfield Free Northern Rivers group. It got going just three years ago, and pioneered surveying communities to see what they think about CSG.

Tiny towns and communities have declared themselves "gasfield free", attaching now-familiar yellow triangles to their gates. It's a little disingenuous - the one question asked is: "Do you want your road and property to remain gasfield free?" Few people would say no to that - 95% of communities in the area have agreed - but it has proved a potent tactic.

The whole strategy is based on devolving everything to locals to run their own campaigns and to conduct their own surveys. Gasfield Free Northern Rivers helps with strategy and support, and is in turn backed by umbrella group Lock the Gate, which began in Queensland, where CSG is well established.

Ricketts believes the campaign has rattled and confused political parties and left established environmental groups behind. "One thing Lock the Gate did, it didn't worry about parliamentary lobbying," Ricketts says. "It just said we're going to build a giant social movement and when we have, you'll come to us, and if you look at this election that's what you're seeing. The politicians are now falling over themselves to make concessions, and if you look at the NSW election, it's absurd: 'I'm more against coal seam gas than you are'."

Ricketts is right. The political shifts have been dramatic. Labor was the party in government that issued CSG exploitation licences "like confetti" as the premier, Mike Baird, likes to put it. All but one licence in the northern rivers were issued by Labor, for as little as $1,000 each, some to small companies with little experience or resources. According to Lock the Gate, there remain 28 licences that Labor approved while in office.

Related: NSW election: National party faces losing heartland seats in the bush

Now, Labor says it has changed. It supports a moratorium on the industry across the state until the recommendations of NSW's chief scientist, Mary O'Kane, are fully implemented and the industry is "proven to be safe". It will declare "no-go" zones, including all of the northern rivers, which cover the three seats it is targeting. It says it will cancel the licences of companies such as Metgasco, insisting that no compensation is needed. Unsurprisingly, Metgasco is furious, saying it has spent $120m on the project so far under licences approved and renewed by both sides of politics, and that it would demand compensation.

The state government is furious, too, because it has it has done far more to rein in the industry than Labor. The Nationals leader, Troy Grant, has acknowledged that "people are yelling at each other" over this issue, "probably one of the most difficult things we've had to grapple with in government". It has tightened regulations, bought back more than a dozen licences, and on Friday said it would insist on buying back the Dart licence covering most of the seat of Lismore. But it won't cancel licences - which opponents want - saying that to do so would end up in costly legal battles. That means, say opponents, that companies won't hand over lucrative licences, just ones in areas where there is little gas.

The moratorium on issuing new coal seam gas licences remains, but at some point after the election the Coalition says it will identify strategic areas for CSG development. There's no doubt the government believes CSG is necessary. "It will remain a big part of the economy, yes, and it is part of our overall solution," Baird told the Australian Financial Review recently.

Dean Draper, the co-ordinator of Gasfield Free Northern Rivers, says the government's policy is all "smoke and mirrors" and it couldn't just keep blaming Labor for the old cowboy days. "The government renewed these CSG licences - they didn't have to renew them - and they're saying once they're in you can't get rid of them. Labor and Greens talk about cancelling licences whereas the Nationals don't have that policy."

Great Artesian Basin feeds argument

In the northern rivers, it can seem as though CSG has no friends, but that's not true across all NSW. Drive 600km from Byron Bay and you get to the north-western town of Narrabri, population 7,500, surrounded by cotton, wheat and cattle farms. This is also coal country - Whitehaven Coal's contentious Maules Creek mine is in this shire.

Santos's $2bn CSG project is proposed in the Pilliga state forest 25km from town. It has government support, including that of the local Nationals MP and water minister, Kevin Humphries, who told a candidates' forum that "if someone comes into your community and wants to spend $2bn ... give them a go and see what they have to offer". It has the backing of the local council and many businesses. Santos is confident most residents support it, too, although that's not a universal view.

The Narrabri gas project would be the largest CSG operation in the state, with 850 gas wells drilled over 20 years. The company estimates it could provide half of NSW's gas needs when fully operational, at a time when the government is warning of looming shortages.

Until a few days ago, Santos believed it had Labor's support, too, at least tentatively, and was confident that it would meet Labor's condition that the chief scientist's recommendations be implemented. It might have been sitting out the election, but that idea was upended when Foley announced Labor would ban CSG in the Pilliga and would refuse to allow Santos to proceed with production should Labor win the election. No compensation was mentioned for a project that has already cost Santos more than $1bn.

Foley said: "The risks CSG poses to the natural assets of the Pilliga, particularly the underground water storages, are unacceptable."

Labor cited CSIRO modelling indicating the forest was an "important recharge area from the Great Artesian basin" and quoted the federal government's environmental assessments team which acknowledged "the Pilliga region (in general) is recognised as an important recharge area for the Great Artesian Basin, [and] the potential for high-level impacts to a water resource presents a real possibility".

Foley said: "There's some parts of the state that must be off limits to coal seam gas permanently, and the recharge zone for the Great Artesian basin has to be one of them."

Related: Battle for Liverpool Plains: Chinese coal project tears at fabric of rural NSW

The announcement flabbergasted Santos's NSW general manager, Peter Mitchley, who was "at a loss" to understand it "given we have not yet released our environmental impact statement which will explain in detail how we will manage any impact from our work". It stresses that Santos's coal seams are hundreds of metres below the Great Artesian basin.

"We don't affect the recharge of the Great Artesian basin," Mitchley told the ABC. "It's an entirely safe and sustainable project." Foley's announcement also stunned the government, and alarmed business groups in NSW.

Mitchley is frustrated with the whole debate, although he acknowledges the industry is partly to blame, with loose practices on some projects and a lack of real community consultation on others. Santos's project has had its troubles, too, with the company in 2013 detecting elevated levels of uranium and other heavy metals in an aquifer below one of its wastewater ponds that was leaking. It was fined $1,500.

Its share price has dropped and in February it slashed $808m off the value of its holding, now standing at $543m, citing a reduction in reserves and delays.

Mitchley insists "we're nowhere near that point" of giving up because it's all too hard in NSW. If the project gets approval, he is confident of finding investors, and gas could be flowing in a little over two years.

The project has some advantages. Unlike those in the northern rivers, it is mostly on state-owned land designated for these sorts of industries. Santos is bending over backwards to support the town financially and will take anyone who asks out to the Pilliga to have a look at its trial wells and water storage ponds.

Its policy is not to search for gas on private land without permission - there are a number of private landholders who have given access to Santos, although it will not reveal how many. He says there are no plans to frack - the controversial process involving pumping fluids and chemicals into a well to fracture the coal seam to allow it to flow more easily. Earlier work had showed the coal had already fractured naturally through earth movements and the idea was "redundant".

The environmental impact statement is not yet complete, but Mitchley says all the evidence to date is that the project would not affect groundwater, the big fear of locals and farmers and the stated reason for Labor's new policy. For that he cites the chief scientist's report, which said the risks of CSG were manageable and that the industry was no more or less risky than other extractive industries.

As for water, Mitchley says Santos won't be taking it from the same source that townspeople and farmers use. It will remove water - a relatively small amount, he says - from "much deeper down, a completely unconnected source".

Mitchley believes in climate change, and the company has made much of its green credentials: that the greenhouse emissions from burning gas are half that of burning coal. That, like much in this debate, is ferociously contested. The argument is about how much gas - basically methane - is unintentionally leaked during the CSG process. Methane has 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and if too much is leaked, gas's advantage over coal is reduced.

Mitchley says the argument is "unbelievable" and shakes his head. "It's one of the ironies of this current debate. Imagine for a minute a scenario where the development of gas is prohibited by green activism. There is a thirst for energy and that energy deficit is met by increased coal. What an ironic outcome. What an absolutely bizarre, twisted outcome."

Mitcheley says what is missing in the debate in NSW is a discussion about how we balance the environmental cost of providing much-needed energy with the lifestyles most of us want to live. "We don't have technology today at a cost we can afford where we can go magically we're all green and renewables."

'We cannot afford to lose any industry'

Russell Stewart , 58, boasts that he was "born in Narrabri and I will die in Narrabri". He's a local businessman and the president of the Narrabri chamber of commerce. He is "$100% comfortable" with the Santos CSG project and says most locals agree with him. He does volunteer that he worked for Santos as a community consultant for a time, and that the company leases some commercial properties he owns. "I'm bloody pleased they do otherwise they would have been empty otherwise."

"If it wasn't for Santos and CSG at the moment, that street would be dead, I'm telling you. Look around you, we haven't had rain in three years. [Opponents] say: 'You're only in it for the money' and I say shit yeah, I want people to stay in the bush."

This is the other side of many country towns. Their populations are declining and ageing. They want jobs, and local businesses need contracts. Already, Santos spends $350,000 a year on supporting local groups, everything from the Rotary club to the men's shed.

Stewart talks of outsiders, particularly the Wilderness Society, coming to town and assuming people are opposed. There is a local group supporting the gas project and another one opposing.

"The public feeling is that they're sick and bloody tired of people speaking for them. The feeling is that we cannot afford to lose any industry.

"Have a look at country towns falling apart, why aren't we?"

It is hard to tell the public mood in Narrabri. It is in the huge National-held electorate of Barwon, which makes up nearly half the state. An independent candidate, Rohan Boehm, is running largely in opposition to CSG, arguing it is just too risky "until we can be absolutely certain that there won't be a depletion of our natural resource, our air and water quality."

A ReachTel poll conducted by Boehm found 87% of the electorate - broader than Narrabri, but still significant - were either very concerned or concerned about their risks to water supplies and food-growing areas from CSG mining. More then half of Nationals voters said they were very concerned.

Just outside Narrabri lives grain and cattle farmer Ron Campey, aged 70. The Santos project won't come near his farm, but he's fighting hard against it anyway. "It's for the next generation, it's basically the water quality, or the damage to our water aquifers, and the escaped gases as far as health is concerned," he says.

As for those supporting the industry: "The town's been bought by Santos. It's as much money as you want to everyone in town."

Far away in Byron Bay in the northern rivers, the mood is much more united. CSG is not wanted here. A group of 100 or so people gather at dawn on the main beach, to mark one year since the Bentley blockade victory, which people still talk about as though it were yesterday. There are children and adults, some wrapped in blankets against the chill.

Meg Nielsen, a farmer from Bentley who protested a year ago, grabs me for their signature song. The crowd sways as one with the music. "Let's walk gently / on the hallowed ground of Bentley / let's stand arm in arm / for our neighbour's farm."

Related: Frackman's accidental activist: 'There's blood in the water and I'm the shark'

Nielsen says the whole thing has brought the community together. "Hippies, Nimbin people, professional people, tradies, farmers, right across the community. We've never had so many friends in our lives," she laughs.

Nielsen, 66, is a National party member. A year ago, she quit her full-time job with an accountancy firm to work on this protest. On her T-shirt is printed: "Vote for a gas free Northern Rivers. Put the Nationals last."

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change;
Founding family of the US oil empire Exxon, begged the company to give up climate denial and reform their ways a decade ago - but attempts at engagement failed

BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in New York

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 920 words

Members of the Rockefeller family tried to get ExxonMobil to acknowledge the dangers of climate change a decade ago - but failed in their efforts to reform the oil giant.

In letters, lunch meetings, and shareholder resolutions, the descendants of John D Rockefeller, founder of the oil empire that eventually became Exxon, sought repeatedly to persuade the company to abandon climate denial and begin shifting their business towards clean energy.

"We were really begging the company to look harder at what they were doing. They were still into climate denial and funding deniers and really against any positive steps," said Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, who helped lead the reform effort.

The outreach effort, led mainly by Rockefeller's great grandchildren, began with a lunch meeting in 2004 with Exxon's then head of investor relations.

"This was the family trying to get into a friendly conversation with ExxonMobil, feeling we have a strong historical connection with that company," said Goodwin. "We wanted to start talking with the company about their view of the future and how they could be a constructive player as well as part of the problem."

The company was blindsided. David Henry, then head of investor relations, was "stunned" at the family's concern about climate change, according to Goodwin's recollection of events.

"The head of investor relations was really surprised to find we didn't love Exxon as it was but thought changes might be a good idea," she said.

Over the next few years, Goodwin and about a dozen other Rockefellers launched three separate shareholder resolutions pressing Exxon to recognise climate change and invest in renewable energy. The cousins also sought an independent chairman, believing it would make the company more responsive.

At the time the oil company was the main funder of dozens of front groups and researchers rubbishing any link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change - or denying climate change was occurring at all.

Among the recipients was Willie Soon, the Harvard-Smithsonian researcher who received more than $1m (£0.7m) from industry, according to documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings.

In a report released on the eve of their 2008 annual general meeting, the oil company pledged to stop funding groups that promote climate denial.

However, the company continued funding Soon for three more years. The documents show that Exxon gave Soon an additional $76,106 from 2008 to 2010, despite claiming to have stopped.

The shareholder resolutions were easily defeated.

The US environmentalist Bill McKibben says the failure of the family's efforts is telling and signals the limits of shareholder engagement with some fossil fuel companies. "It makes a very clear point that engaging with fossil fuel companies to somehow get them to change their ways is unlikely to work if the family of the founder can't get Exxon to shift."

The Rockefeller heirs also tried private and public pressure. Nearly 100 direct descendants also signed a letter expressing concern as investors and begging the company to stop funding climate deniers, Goodwin said.

In 2006, another cousin, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, wrote a letter to the incoming Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson, urging the company to stop funding climate deniers.

"ExxonMobil's longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change sceptics, and those sceptics' access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy," the letter said. "It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the 'deniers'."

Most of the Rockefellers' personal fortunes are held in trusts set up in the 1930s.

The family retains only a tiny fraction of shares in Exxon. But the stand taken by the Rockefellers - at a time when Exxon was under attack from campaign groups for its support of climate denial - rankled company executives who had expected family members to be allies, Goodwin said. "They were shocked to find this family that had a strong link with them, and that they expect to find a great friend and admirer... had such a negative view."

But even with the weight of that historical connection Exxon was still not persuaded to change.

"I was pretty discouraged. Exxon has an extremely strong culture of believing that they are right and know what they are doing and really don't need to listen to anybody else," Goodwin went on. "It was clear that we didn't have an ability to make more of a dent in that."

When the Guardian asked for a comment on the Rockefellers' attempts to engage with the company it issued this statement. "ExxonMobil will not respond to Guardian inquiries because of its lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers."

Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil's vice president for public and government affairs has previously been dismissive of the concept of fossil fuel divestment, saying that it is "out of step with reality".

"There are no scalable alternative fuels or technologies available today capable of taking the place of fossil fuels and offering society what those energy sources provide," he wrote in a blog in October.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

United Reformed Church of Scotland divests from fossil fuels;
United Reformed Church of Scotland commits to move assets out of oil, gas and coal companies and to not invest in fossil fuels in the future

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 533 words

The United Reformed Church (URC) of Scotland, which represents 1,472 churches, has committed to pull out its investments in fossil fuel companies.

The resolution was passed with "overwhelming support" on Saturday at a meeting of their General Synod at the Scottish Police College in Fife. The URC has about 60,000 members.

A spokesman for the synod says about 4% of its total portfolio is invested in oil, coal and gas companies, including Shell and Total. They have committed to divest from all such companies and to not make any future fossil fuel investments. Eco-Congregation Scotland, the environmental movement for Scottish churches, estimate that their current assets amount to £70,000.

On March 16 the Guardian began a campaign calling on the world's two largest charitable foundations - the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - to divest from fossil fuels. The campaign, which has attracted more than 144,000 signatures, is part of a new climate change project introduced by editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

There are s everal times more fossil fuel reserves in the ground than can be burned if the world is to reach international targets to keep global warming within a 2C rise and avoid catastrophic climate change. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England has said that "the vast majority of reserves are unburnable" which would mean that the assets of fossil fuel companies would become "stranded" or worthless.

Reverend John Humphreys, moderator of the church's Synod in Scotland said: "I'm delighted that the synod has shown a clear commitment to ethical investment. They have taken affirmative action against climate change and put people and the planet at the heart of their decision making. We hope and pray that other churches will feel able to respond ethically to the growing threat of catastrophic climate change."

The URC joins a fast-growing divestment movement, begun by the global climate organisation 350.org. Since its beginning in 2010, more than 220 institutions have committed to divest including universities, pension funds and philanthropic foundations.

The divestment campaign targeting the URC emerged from a small group of its members. They say it was prompted by a recommendation from the World Council of Churches, which ruled out fossil fuel investments in July 2014. The umbrella organisation represents half a billion Christians and 345 member churches worldwide.

Mark Letcher, campaign co-ordinator for the faith-based divestment campaign at Bright Now, said the decision by the URC "marks a huge step forward for the UK church divestment campaign, which is gathering momentum as churches around the world disinvest. This decision demonstrates the church's commitment to lead the urgently needed transition away from fossil fuels. We call on other UK churches to follow them".

The Church of England (C of E) has set up a group to take advice on climate change and investment and has been reviewing their strategy for 18 months.

The diocese of Birmingham passed a motion on Sunday calling on the C of E to divest, following a similar motion passed by the Oxford diocese in November 2014. The C of E is due to report back later this year.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Earth hour: millions will switch off lights around the world for climate action;
Annual switching off of lights in homes, businesses and landmarks on Saturday evening holds extra significance ahead of this year's climate talks in Paris, says the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 618 words

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said hundreds of millions of Earth hour participants around the world will demand a strong global climate agreement by switching off their lights for an hour on Saturday night.

Many of the world's brightest lights will go dark at 8:30pm (GMT) as Earth hour marks its ninth year. In a video address, Ban said the symbolic switching-off held more significance than ever, just nine months before a pivotal UN meeting on the climate crisis in Paris.

"Climate change is a people problem. People cause climate change and people suffer from climate change. People can also solve climate change. This December in Paris, the United Nations is bringing nations together to agree a new, universal and meaningful climate agreement. It will be the culmination of a year of action on sustainable development," said Ban.

Related: Earth Hour around the world - in pictures

More than 7,000 cities in 172 countries are expected to take part in the world's largest ever demonstration, which has grown from a single World Wildlife Fund (WWF) event in Sydney in 2007.

"Earth Hour shows what is possible when we unite in support of a cause: no individual action is too small, no collective vision is too big. This is the time to use your power," said Ban.

Organisers said this year's demonstration would be the biggest yet. Sudhanshu Sarronwala, chair of Earth Hour global said: "Climate change is not just the issue of the hour, it's the issue of our generation. The lights may go out for one hour, but the actions of millions throughout the year will inspire the solutions required to change climate change."

Some the world's most famous landmarks will turn their lights out. The UN building in New York will join London's Houses of Parliament, Rio de Janeiro's Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In Bulgaria a giant Danube sturgeon fish will be drawn in fire in the capital, Sofia. Millions of other, more humble, participants will take part by simply switching from electricity to candlelight for an hour.

Colin Butfield, director of campaigns at WWF-UK said the mass participation was a demand for climate action and politicians should take heed. "The fact that such a huge number of people are taking part in Earth Hour across the world and are using it as a moment to inspire action on sustainability in their own communities sends a really clear message that the public is ready to tackle climate change - we now need politicians to show the same drive," he said.

Britain's energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, who has been heavily involved in the climate negotiations at the UN, called for a response to climate change that was commensurate with its threat. "It's time for everyone to recognise that climate change will touch just about everything we do and everything we care about. Earth Hour is an excellent opportunity for millions of people across the world to take one simple step to show they're serious about backing action on climate change," said Davey.

Ban said the focus on climate change should not distract from Earth Hour's other key mission: introducing clean energy to the most remote and impoverished communities on Earth. "By turning out the lights we also highlight that more than a billion people lack access to electricity. Their future wellbeing requires access to clean, affordable energy," he said.

In 2014 Earth Hour used a crowdfunding platform to raise money and deliver thousands of fuel-efficient stoves to families in Madagascar and solar kits to remote villages in Uganda. The organisation also supplied islands in the Philippines with solar power for the first time and raised money for victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Wouldn't it be better to say that your business has purpose?;
Large companies are starting to realise that when it comes to introducing ethical practices into their day-to-day operations, small is still beautiful. David Benady reports on a recent Guardian seminar on systems thinking

BYLINE: David Benady

SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

LENGTH: 1596 words

Grappling with the burning environmental issues of climate change, resource scarcity, poverty and population growth, it's easy to feel powerless. However, one approach gaining popularity in the world of sustainability is systems thinking. This looks at systems in their entirety and seeks holistic remedies, rather than concentrating on discrete problems.

It is an approach that businesses are beginning to embrace as they look to transform their organisations and embed environmental and ethical practices into their everyday activities. It requires businesses to change their corporate purpose. But where do they start?

To discuss how systems thinking can help business leaders transform their organisations, the Guardian, in association with PwC, brought together about 50 company bosses, leaders in sustainability and academics to discuss the issue. They split into four working groups to share best practice and debate how systems thinking offers a practical way of introducing environmental and social thinking into business activities.

Each group then reported back to the conference; this was followed by a panel discussion.

One of the biggest problems for any large organisation looking to transform its approach is overcoming silos and power bases - different departments tend to work independently and resist outside change. Jane Clark, climate change adviser and head of learning at the Department for International Development, said: "The problem is with silos - system thinking is the antithesis of that."

Clark gave an example of how systems thinking had changed approaches to forestry. Thirty years ago this was simply about planting trees, measuring them and cutting them down. "Now if we define a forestry project it's about governance, it's about markets, it's about partnerships, it's about working with the EU on trade law around timber. That's an example of where the development world is shifting from the technocratic view towards a much more holistic way of thinking," she said.

A significant challenge for businesses is deciding how to start a transformation programme. PwC's global corporate responsibility leader Lisa Greenlee told a working group discussion that a few years ago the company began training about one quarter of its staff in sustainability issues to create a "tipping point".

"If you get enough influential people in your organisation starting to think in a new way then they can start to be the change agents," Greenlee said.

Estelle Brachlianoff, director for the UK and Northern Europe at waste management company Veolia, said the business had identified 40 employees as change agents, not for their expertise in sustainability, but because they were influencers who would carry other employees with them.

Brachlianoff explained that Veolia has transformed its corporate purpose away from being simply a waste-disposal company to become a mining and chemicals business working in the circular economy. It has created a project producing energy for 5,000 homes in Southwark, south London, using black bin bag refuse.

Veolia has also found ways of extracting minerals from street sweepings, such as palladium emitted by car exhausts, and has manufactured plastics made from human waste.

"We are not solving the whole circularity of the entire world, but I have a list of examples of real business cases that are happening now in the UK. We want to show our customers that it is possible," she said.

Collaboration and participation were strong themes in the discussion, as business transformation requires partnerships between organisations that would often never work together. Chris Cook, global sustainability director at paint manufacturer AkzoNobel, said the company was looking at recycling the paint left over after decorating that tends to sit in cans in sheds and garages.

AkzoNobel went into partnership with a small business that had the same goals, because it would have struggled to achieve its aims had the project been carried out internally. "We are working with small companies - something we normally never do -because we're beginning to realise that there are too many barriers due to our own systems," Cook said.

A prime opportunity for implementing change is when businesses relaunch their processes after a change in market conditions or when introducing new technology. But as Baran Osmanoglu, a business transformation consultant working in France, told the discussion, companies she has worked with have been resistant to introducing sustainable practices. "Usually the answer is: 'Yes, but the cost will be higher.' Or: 'I'm so used to doing my job that way. What you say is nice, but maybe later.'"

A positive outcome of taking a system-wide approach to transforming businesses is that the usual blame game associated with environmental lobbying could become a thing of the past. As Nadine McCormick, programme officer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said: "It's not about blaming people, but looking at the systems and why they failed."

McCormick said that it would be helpful if the Guardian "stopped pointing fingers" at people and corporations, and instead outlined the system issues that had gone wrong and how they should be addressed. The discussion heard about attempts to transform the way business leaders and their customers view the purpose of organisations. Jan Levy, managing director of consultancy Three Hands, described how he had liaised with business leaders from British Gas to help them work with an affordable warmth group in Birmingham.

"We exposed business leaders to the social issues surrounding people's need for warmth, health, affordability and safety and the relevance that had to their business. It gave them an understanding of what life is like if you are living in fuel poverty." Levy said that the aim was "to make it more real for them".

Picking up on this, PwC's partner for sustainability and climate change, Geoff Lane, told the panel: "How do you get more people to think along these lines? In my opinion, there isn't any substitute for first-hand experience. You can do the theoretical bit online, but you've got to immerse people into systems situations."

Meanwhile James Tiernan, energy and environment manager at Unite Students, a provider of accommodation for 43,000 UK students, said his role was to get these residents to act more sustainably, something that would save energy and water costs for the company. Tiernan said the company had tried to embed a system-wide approach to sustainability by stealth. "What we've ended up with is a flexible tool kit that can be given to 140-odd buildings across the country locally, in a way that is right for them."

Floor tile company Interface, which has strong ethical and environmental policies, was considered by the panel to be a good example of a company that had made an effective transformation to sustainability.

Nicola Millson, managing director of sustainability consultancy 6heads, who has done consultancy work with Interface, said: "[Interface] stands out because, in some ways, it is not as process-driven. It really doesn't like process, which allows a lot of space for people to explore and experiment."

John Hutton, head of sustainability at construction giant Bam Nuttall, added that it is important to remember in any review of corporate purpose that sustainability is about humanity. "It is about bringing more humanity to work if we want our businesses to be more sustainable. It's about embracing that emotion," he said.

Prof Stephen Martin, honorary professor at the University of Worcester, told the panel that there is so much complexity in organisational systems that they can appear to be beyond change. Finding ways to cut through this complexity is the great challenge of systems thinking. "This is a huge dysfunctional mess that systems thinking can help clean up," he said.

Richard Spencer, head of sustainability at accountancy body ICAEW, said that the accountancy profession needed to look at the core purpose of business and how this is accounted for. Ultimately, businesses need to move away from a profit-first approach.

"Wouldn't it be better to say that as a business you have a purpose - for example, a pharma company's is to make people well - and that to fulfill that purpose we have a socially constructed model that is a profit model?" Spencer said.

This would put social purpose before profit and ensure that businesses take into account their wider responsibilities to the world. Such a system-wide approach could be just what's needed to change the practices of companies so they can help solve humanity's problems.

Related: Six things we learned about business and sustainability policy

On the panel

Jo Confino (Chair) Executive editor, the Guardian

Estelle Brachlianoff Director, UK and Northern Europe, Veolia Environment

Geoff Lane Partner, PwC

Stephen Martin Honorary professor, University of Worcester

The systems thinking series is funded by PwC. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here .

Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Great Barrier Reef protection zones help boost fish stocks 'to pre-European times';
Long-term study in the reef's marine park finds an 80% difference in the biomass of coral trout between areas where fishing is allowed and no-go zones

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 399 words

The expansion of no-fishing zones across the Great Barrier Reef has allowed fish numbers to rebound in some places to levels not seen since European arrival in Australia, a long-term study of the ecosystem has shown.

Data taken from underwater surveys of about 40% of the reef's marine park between 1983 and 2012 found that biomass of coral trout more than doubled in protected areas.

A separate analysis of two comparable reefs, one where fishing was allowed and one where it was banned, found an 80% difference in coral trout biomass.

Biomass is measured not only in the numbers of fish but also their size, demonstrating that coral trout, a popular species for fishers, grow much larger in no-fishing areas, allowing them to spawn more offspring.

About a third of the Great Barrier Reef's marine park is off limits to any kind of fishing. These "green zones" were vastly expanded to their current size in 2004 - previously, only 5% of the marine park was fully protected.

The research, conducted by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) and James Cook University and published in Current Biology, found that not only have fish numbers rebounded, they are more robust, coping better with natural events such as cyclones.

Researchers said the analysis vindicated the then-contentious decision to expand no-fishing zones in 2004.

"It was a politically bold move at the time and we needed monitoring to show it has worked - and we now know it has," said Hugh Sweatman, a scientist at Aims. "The zoning has done exactly what it intended to do. Fishermen seem to be guardedly in favour of the zoning, too."

Sweatman said the Great Barrier Reef was well managed compared with other reefs around the world, which have suffered from over-fishing where top predators have been removed, leading to negative effects flowing down the food chain.

"Obviously fishing does still have an effect on the Great Barrier Reef but these green zones have taken the fish community back to pre-European times," he said.

While the green zones appear to have boosted fish numbers, marine life on the reef also has to cope with warming, acidifying waters due to climate change, as well as pressures from pollution and coastal development.

"The reef's outlook report states that climate change is the biggest long-term threat and it's safe to say that climate change is not going to be affected by zoning," Sweatman said.

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Large fall in UK greenhouse gas emissions of over 8% last year;
The biggest fall in emissions since 1990 saw carbon dioxide output drop by almost a tenth while energy from renewable sources rose to a record high of almost 20% of electricity, government figures show

BYLINE: Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 646 words

The UK's greenhouse gas emissions plunged by 8.4% last year, as household energy consumption slumped, the use of coal for electricity generation fell, and policies on climate change took effect, according to government statistics released on Thursday.

Carbon dioxide output fell by almost a tenth, as renewable energy generation rose to a new record high, accounting for nearly a fifth of electricity.

It was the biggest fall in emissions since 1990. Over the last five years, following a sharp fall in 2009, emissions appeared to have reached a plateau, with slight rises in some years owing to increasing coal use. The price of coal has dropped on world markets, as shale gas has sapped demand in the US, leaving a glut.

Green campaigners welcomed the fall, but they warned that more must be done to reach targets.

Related: UK households used 14% less energy last year but still paid more

In part, the slump in carbon output was down to record average high temperatures across the UK in 2014, which drove down demand for heating and led to a big drop in household energy consumption - even though bills rose over the year.

The emissions fall was a boost to Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, ahead of a difficult general election for the Lib Dems. The party has traditionally relied on its green credentials with voters, but this has been a harder sell when in coalition.

Davey said: "2014 was truly record-breaking year for low carbon generation. Our plan to decarbonise the economy while it grows is working - we've reduced our emissions by 8%, increased the amount of electricity we're getting from renewables and seen the economy grow at the same time. It is crucial we continue to build a low carbon energy sector based on home grown sources, as it is crucial to improving our energy security, as well as stimulating economic growth and reducing emissions."

The fall will also strengthen the UK's position at the Paris climate talks this December, where world governments are expected to agree to greenhouse gas targets to take effect beyond 2020, when current pledges expire. By 31 March, all countries are expected to submit their proposals on how far they will cut emissions, in the case of developed countries, and on proposed curbs to their emissions growth, in the case of poorer nations. Some may miss the deadline, but the EU, the US and China have already made public their pledges.

These pledges will then be considered to decide how fair they are and how far they take the world to the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to prevent global warming from exceeding 2C, regarded as the threshold of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.

Emma Pinchbeck of WWF said: "Falling carbon emissions from the energy sector is welcome news and shows that action on carbon emissions gets results. While this drop is positive, we must remember that more ambitious carbon emissions reductions are required across different sectors to meet our climate change commitments."

Green groups pointed to the rise in renewable energy generation, which hit 19% last year, as a key factor in the emissions fall. However, the future of onshore wind - the biggest and cheapest generator of large-scale renewable power - is in doubt as an incoming Conservative government would end subsidies for the technology and might bring in tougher regulations on the building of new wind farms.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: "This is further evidence, if it was needed, that efforts to cut carbon and boost our economy can go hand in hand. Since a reduction in coal use was a crucial factor in bringing down carbon dioxide emissions, these figures give us a taste of what could be achieved if our political leaders got serious about phasing out the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and gave proper backing to clean energy."

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

How much of the world's fossil fuel can we burn?;
The much-quoted three numbers of climate change have raised awareness of the simple fact there's far more fossil fuel than we can burn and the more we extract, the greater the risk of climate catastrophe - but they don't tell us the whole story

BYLINE: Duncan Clark

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1287 words

The world is gradually waking up to the true nature of the climate change conundrum, and not a moment too soon. The situation boils down to this: fossil fuel is immensely useful, valuable and politically important, yet if we want to avoid taking unacceptable risks with the planet we need to leave most of that fuel in the ground - either forever or at least until there's an affordable and scalable way to stop the exhaust gases building up in the atmosphere.

Many of us have been saying this for years (I co-wrote a book about it) but much of the credit for the increased awareness of the need to 'leave the fuel in the ground' goes to Bill McKibben, whose brilliant and much-read article in Rolling Stone clarified for many readers the simple and crucial fact that there is far more carbon in existing fossil fuel reserves than we can safely burn.

So far so good, but McKibben's article has been so influential that the very specific numbers it contains are now often cited as a kind of unchanging gospel truth. Those numbers are as follows. Limiting global warming to the agreed global target of 2C means staying within a 'carbon budget' of 565 GT (gigatonnes or billion tonnes). That is a fifth of the 2,795 GT that would be released if all the world's proven oil, coal and gas reserves were burned. Therefore four-fifths of the fossil fuel must stay in the ground.

But other estimates differ. For example, a recent paper in Nature stated that although we'll need to leave most of the coal in the ground, we can burn half the gas and two-thirds of the oil - a major difference given oil's key role in the world economy. So whose figures should we believe?

The short answer is that all such numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt. For a start, most of them are out of date. The 565 GT budget in McKibben's piece, for instance, was first published in a 2011 report by Carbon Tracker, which in turn based it on research by the Potsdam Institute. The figure therefore excludes the last four or five years of emissions, during which time I'd estimate we've eaten through about a quarter of the 565 Gt budget. Moreover, all such figures are based on a set of assumptions that are worth being aware of. These relate to four key factors:

Evolving climate science No one knows precisely how much warming will be caused by any given build up of CO2 in the air, nor how much of the carbon we emit will stay in the atmosphere, as opposed to getting soaked up by oceans and plants. Instead, the estimated impact of each tonne of CO2 increases or decreases as scientific knowledge improves. A couple of years ago, the last major IPCC report slightly reduced the range of estimates for the climate's 'sensitivity' to CO2, increasing the size of any given carbon budget. The science will continue to evolve.

Acceptable risk Given the inherent uncertainties, the best that scientists can do is tell us the likelihood that any given carbon budget will cause any given level of warming. Picking a budget therefore involves choosing how much risk we're prepared to take of overheating the planet.

This is unavoidably a value judgement as it entails weighing up the cost and inconvenience of reducing fossil fuel use against the risks of exceeding 2C (which itself splits scientific opinion: some experts think exceeding even 1.5C could be disastrous, while others are less nervous about overshooting 2C a little). The Carbon Tracker/Bill McKibben numbers are based on accepting a 20% chance of exceeding 2C. By contrast, the Nature paper is based on 50/50 odds, while the most recent IPCC report shows a 33% chance of failure. Changing the acceptable odds can make a big difference to the budget.

Fuel reserves and emissions data The world's fossil fuel reserves are just a tiny slice of the total fuel resource that we know exists. To count as a reserve, the fuel has to have a good chance of being profitably extracted. Reserves in turn break down into proven reserves (usually defined as those with a 90% chance of eventually being taken out of the ground) and much bigger probable reserves. Fossil fuel being a finite resource, you might assume that proven reserves would shrink each year as we all fill up our cars and heat our homes. In reality, though, in recent years these reserves have stayed flat or even increased slightly as ever more unconventional sources such as tar sands and shale gas get upgraded to proven status thanks to new technologies, such as fracking, and (until recently) high fuel prices. But as carbon emissions continue, our remaining budget does get smaller every year - and therefore the proportion of fuel we can burn.

Beyond fossil fuels Although CO2 is the main driver of global warming, there are plenty of others, such as soot, methane, nitrous oxide and even aeroplane vapour trails. Tackling these other warming agents quickly would increase the CO2 budget for any given odds of 2C, whereas allowing them to increase would have the opposite effect. As the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows, success or failure on these other fronts could make a big difference to our carbon budget. And that's not all: although fossil fuel combustion is the main source of CO2, we also release the same gas by clearing forests and producing cement. The more of our carbon budget we eat through in these other ways, the less will be left for burning fossil fuels.

With all these factors at play, there is plenty of scope for conflicting, confusing and out of date estimates. If I had to run the numbers myself (as I did for the Guardian's new interactive fossil fuel counters) I would start with the IPCC stat signed off last year by almost every government in the world: a carbon budget of 1,000 GT of CO2 from 2011 to give a 66% chance of staying under 2C. Subtract the roughly 150 GT we've already burned since then and that leaves about 850 GT for all sources of CO2.

If we rapidly stopped deforestation and pushed down hard on the other drivers of global warming, we might be able to stretch our fossil fuel budget to 1,000 GT - which would let us burn around a third of proven reserves. Let deforestation and other warming agents run amok, however, while also aiming for better odds of staying below 2C, and we might have as little as 300 GT left for fossil fuels - which would be closer to a 10th of proven reserves.

In other words, while the familiar Bill McKibben/Carbon Tracker numbers are within the sensible range, nothing is written in stone. Everything from our view of risk to our efforts to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from cars and methane emissions from cows will determine how much of the world's fossil fuel we need to leave in the ground. And that's not to mention any disruptive carbon capture technologies that might come along to help us burn more of the fuel without cooking the climate.

For now, however, all of this detail remains academic. Political leaders negotiating at the UN have failed to even discuss a total global carbon budget, while fossil fuels companies (both state owned and private) continue to pump huge sums of money into finding and developing yet more reserves.

So while it is good to understand what factors will determine our carbon budget, it is much more important to call on politicians and investors alike to get a grip on this issue and face up to the simple and incontestable reality: there's far more fossil fuel than we can burn, and the more of it that we take out of the ground, the greater the risk of an irreversible climate catastrophe.

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Bean breakthrough bodes well for climate change challenge;
Scientists have hailed the emergence of heat-tolerant beans, but there are fears corporate interests in Africa's seed sector will wrest control from local farmers

BYLINE: Mark Anderson

SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

LENGTH: 856 words

Scientists are hailing a new breed of bean seed as a breakthrough, thanks to its ability to grow amid rising temperatures and yield more nutritional value, qualities they believe can thwart the anticipated destruction of nearly half of all bean production.

The new seed was launched on Wednesday by scientists from the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. As well as being more resilient to heat, the bean has a higher iron content.

About 400 million people rely on beans for subsistence, according to CGIAR. But by 2050 nearly half of the world's bean production could be wiped out by rising temperatures if new seed varieties are not rolled out immediately.

"Beans are not very well adapted to high temperatures because they originated in the cool hills and mountains of central America, Mexico and South America. So pushing them down into the warmer areas has always been a challenge," said Steve Beebe, a researcher at CGIAR, based at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia.

In 2012, CGIAR researchers began to test more than 1,000 types of beans in a bid to find "heat beater" beans able to grow amid high temperatures and drought. Scientists cultivated test plots on Colombia's Caribbean coast and in greenhouses, before eventually discovering 30 heat-tolerant bean types that can withstand a 4C increase in temperature. CGIAR said it used natural breeding to discover the seed.

"In the short run, [bean production in] central America is going to be up against the wall, in terms of high temperatures, droughts and hurricanes. In east Africa currently, the bean production is at mid to higher altitudes, so - in the short-term - Africa won't be under quite as much threat. But by the end of the century, east Africa will be under serious, serious threat from climate change," said Beebe.

Beebe believes seeds should be distributed in small, affordable packages that farmers can test before committing to more.

"When you sell seeds in very small packets it gives the farmer the option to invest in a very small amount - it's the cost of a cup of tea - and then test it in their back yard. If they like it, they can buy more," he said.

"Otherwise you might have NGOs giving seeds away, which is not sustainable, or you have private sector firms selling 50kg bags, which farmers can't afford."

Rising temperatures and ambitious food security targets have created an urgent need for better seeds that can grow in warmer climates and yield more nutritional value to farms in the world's poorest countries. But how this is done, and how farmers access the seeds, is hotly debated.

Earlier in the week, protestors gathered outside the London office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to demonstrate against a meeting they said would promote corporate interests in Africa's seed sector.

Dangling a cage full of seeds in front of passersby, they yelled, "Come and free the seeds!" before smashing open the cage, which they said symbolised the corporate takeover of Africa's seed markets.

As seeds spilled on to the pavement, the meeting, hosted by the Gates Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (USAid), promoted production and distribution in Africa's seed sector. The attendees were listed as key donor organisations, private seed companies and agricultural research centres, but did not include any groups representing farmers, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian.

The Gates Foundation and USAid have said they are working to improve food security in the world's poorest countries. USAid's flagship programme, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, has been criticised for requiring African governments to change laws and policies in favour of businesses.

The Gates Foundation said the meeting would focus on "[encouraging] the development and promotion of appropriate models for the production and delivery of early generation seeds of improved varieties for a diversity of food crops in sub-Saharan Africa".

Attendees are understood to have discussed seed markets for maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, cassava and sweet potato in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

African agricultural groups said the conversation around improving Africa's seed sector needs to involve groups that represent small-scale farmers.

The Gates Foundation was not immediately available for comment.

Mariam Mariet, director of the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), said: "Public-farmer partnerships that integrate farmer and scientific knowledge will generate a more accountable process, and produce longer-lasting and more meaningful solutions for African agricultural production, than these profit-driven, exclusive and narrow processes," she said.

Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah, chairman of Food Sovereignty Ghana, added: "This meeting will push this corporate agenda to hand more control away from our small farmers and into the hands of big seed companies."

· This article was amended on 26 March to clarify that Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah is the chairman of Food Sovereignty Ghana and not chairwoman as previously reported

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

'Green' dam linked to killings of six indigenous people in Guatemala;
Indigenous people are being 'terrorised' after protests against a mega-dam backed by European development banks, whose carbon allowances will be tradable on the EU's emissions trading system

BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brussels

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1006 words

A planned mega-dam in Guatemala, whose carbon credits will be tradable under the EU's emissions trading system, has been linked to grave human rights abuses, including the killing of six indigenous people, two of them children.

Several European development banks and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) have provided funds for the $250m (£170m) Santa Rita dam.

But human rights groups back claims from the Mayan community that they were never consulted about the hydro project, which will forcibly displace thousands of people to generate 25MW of energy, mostly for export to neighbouring countries.

The issue has become a focus of indigenous protest in Guatemala - which has led to a march on the capital and severe political repression.

"At the moment our community is living under the same conditions as they did during the war," Maximo Ba Tiul, a spokesman for the Peoples' Council of Tezulutla´n told the Guardian. "Our civilian population is once again being terrorised by armed thugs."

Around 200,000 Mayans died or were "disappeared" during the civil war of the early 1980s, leading to the conviction of the country's former president, Efraín Ríos Montt, in 2013 on genocide charges.

Augusto Sandino Ponce, the son of a local landowner who community leaders allege worked as a contractor to Montt's junta during the civil war, is at the centre of new accusations of human rights violations. Last April Ponce and his bodyguards allegedly opened fire on a Mayan community ceremony in which families asked the Earth for permission to plant their crops. One local man, Victor Juc, was killed and several were injured. Ponce reportedly claims he was acting in self defence.

The incident took place two months after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) clean development mechanism (CDM) executive board registered the plant, allowing its future carbon allowances to be traded on the EU's emissions trading system.

In a letter to the UNFCCC's CDM executive board, the People's Council of Tezulutla´n outlined a litany of human rights abuses in the region, including kidnappings, evictions, house burnings, attacks by men wielding machetes and guns, and the arrest of community leaders.

The council also says that an environmental impact assessment for the dam suggests that it would create a 40ft-high wall, flooding local communities and depriving them of access to water, food, transport and recreation.

In approving projects, the CDM board pursues a narrow remit focused on emissions reductions. The reign of terror in the Alta Verapaz region, falls outside it - as did similar events in Honduras.

The situation in Guatemala deteriorated further last August, when 1,500 police were sent into the Q'eqchi' communities of Coba´n, Chisec and Raxruha´, partly to evict residents of Monte Olivo for dam construction work. Community representatives say that police fired tear-gas at villagers who had set up a peaceful blockade, and proceeded to occupy the area.

Locals allege that officers stole animals, food, property and money from peoples' homes, forcing families to take refuge in the mountains. Three indigenous people were killed in Semococh, a nearby town during the operation, according to the People's Council of Tezulutla´n.

"When a government criminalises opposition to such projects, it creates an atmosphere where this kind of violence against protesters - including extra-judicial killings - is more or less legitimised," Heidi Hautala, a Finnish Green MEP, told the Guardian.

Perhaps the most shocking incident took place on 23 August 2013, when two children were killed by an allegedly drunken Santa Rita hydroelectricity company worker looking for David Chen, a community leader in the Monte Olivo region.

Chen was meeting with the rapporteur of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights at the time. When the worker could not find him, he is said to have lined up two of Chen's nephews, David Stuart Pacay Maaz, 11 and Haggai Isaac Guitz Maaz, 13, and killed them with a single bullet to one child's head that continued through the throat of the other. The killer has since been killed himself.

The annual report of the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights implicitly blamed the approval of the dam project for the killings.

"These allegations are well-documented and it is outrageous that the UN's CDM can register such projects that are clearly violating the human rights of indigenous peoples," said Hautala, a member of the European Parliament's development committee. "There has been a great lack of respect of the legal rights of people who want to express their well-reasoned resistance to this mega-dam."

A spokesman for the IFC told the Guardian that the project had only been green-lighted for funding on the understanding it was a popular "run-of-river" project that would increase access to local, affordable electricity. Currently "the project is on hold, as the fund manager discusses further with the local communities," the spokesman said. "Without strong local support, the project will not proceed."

Eva Filzmoser, the director of Carbon Market Watch said: "We want the CDM board to take responsibility and establish a grievance and redress mechanism for local communities to appeal, ask for problematic decisions to be rescinded and gain redress. We will be pushing for this at the Paris climate summit to apply to all forms of climate finance in the future."

Efforts to reform the CDM were boosted last month, when 18 countries signed a "Geneva declaration" calling for human rights norms to be integrated into UNFCCC climate decisions.

"We cannot overlook the injustice faced by the poorest and most vulnerable people, who are disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change," the declaration says. "In a transition to a low-carbon economy, we want to ensure that no one is left behind. We will promote and respect human rights in our climate actions."

Signatory countries to the declaration include France, Sweden, Ireland, Mexico, Uruguay and Peru.

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

On 15 September, while President;
When Prince Charles becomes king, will he be able to stop his compulsive 'meddling'? And if he can't, what will it mean for the monarchy and the United Kingdom?

SECTION: UK NEWS

LENGTH: 5132 words

On 15 September, while President Obama was meeting with his advisers in the White House and deciding how to unleash the world's most powerful military machine on the Islamic State in Iraq, his ambassador to Britain, Matthew Barzun, was spending the day in a field in Gloucestershire, learning about nitrogen-fixing plants and the dangers of sub-clinical mastitis in cows' udders. The reason was simple: Barzun was visiting Prince Charles's organic Home Farm. Wearing boxfresh Hunter wellies, Barzun picked his way around some cowpats to take a close look at a field of organic red clover. He snapped a photo on his smartphone.

For the past 34 years, the farm has been one of Charles's chief passions. It has become the agricultural embodiment of his beliefs about everything from the natural world to the globalised economy. On winter weekends, he can be found - wearing his patched-up tweed farm coat - laying some of the farm's hedges to keep alive one of his beloved traditional farming techniques. (Charles is such an enthusiast that he hosted the National Hedgelaying Championships here in 2005.) The farm closely reflects Charles's likes and dislikes. In one field, there is a herd of Ayrshire cattle. Charles bought them after he declared that he didn't want yet more common "black and whites".

That morning, the ambassador was not the only influential figure invited for a private tour of the royal farm. Alongside Barzun was Professor Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), George Ferguson, the elected mayor of Bristol, and Sir Alan Parker, the chairman of Brunswick, the public relations company that advises Tesco. They were accompanied by civil servants from Defra and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and shown round by the Prince's friend, Patrick Holden, an organic agriculture campaigner, and Charles's farm manager, David Wilson.

The day was organised by Holden's Sustainable Food Trust, but the talking points faithfully echoed Charles's view that industrialised agriculture is a big, dangerous experiment with our environment and a threat to the livelihoods of small farmers. Here was a branch of Prince Charles's power network in action. Away from the public glare, issues that matter intensely to him were being discussed in front of some of the most powerful people in Britain. In an echo of his famous comment of 1986 that he talks to his plants - he joked more recently he actually "instructs them" - there was even a brief exchange on whether oak trees communicate with their relatives through the soil. Holden and Wilson raised a few eyebrows with some of their scientific claims, not least about the danger of antibiotics in meat. On the whole, though, the guests seemed receptive.

Over the past four decades, Charles has carved out a unique position for himself as an elite activist, tirelessly lobbying and campaigning to promote his concerns. From farming to architecture, medicine to the environment, his opinions, warnings and grumbles are always heard. He spreads his ideas through his writings and speeches, his charities and allies and, behind the scenes, in private meetings and correspondence with government ministers. His interventions matter. Peter Hain, the former cabinet minister who lobbied with Charles for NHS trials of complementary medicine, summed up his influence in this way: "He could get a hearing where all the noble, diligent lobbying of the various different associations in the complementary medicine field found it hard."

Letters, written in black inky scrawl, are a key part of his lobbying arsenal. His carriage on the royal train is fitted with a desk, blotting paper and a stash of red-crested HRH notepaper on which he scrawls his "black spider memos". He writes the memos whenever he can - late at night, after dinner guests have left, even at 35,000ft on the royal jet. "I have travelled with him and within five minutes of takeoff, he is doing his letters," said Patrick Holden. "[At home] he goes back to his desk after dinner. How many of us do that?" Sometimes, the late-night letter writing is so exhausting that the prince, who turned 66 last week, is found asleep at his desk.

It is a habit that has put him in a precarious position. On 24 and 25 November, the supreme court will be asked to decide whether Charles's letters to ministers should remain private. This may be the final chapter of a nine-year legal battle between the Guardian and the government over freedom of information laws. In 2005, this newspaper asked to see letters Charles had written to ministers in 2004 and 2005. The government refused but revealed that Charles had sent 27 letters to several departments over eight months. In October 2012 Dominic Grieve, then attorney general, again vetoed release of the letters, arguing that the public might conclude Charles had been "disagreeing with government policy", which "would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because, if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king".

A former high-ranking government official, who is experienced in handling the prince's interaction with ministers, described the risk to Charles's kingship posed by publication as "quite large". There are, he said, "quite a lot of letters and they say some things that are quite zany".

One letter from February 2002, which was leaked to the Daily Mail, revealed Charles's strident approach. Writing to Lord Irvine, then lord chancellor in the Labour cabinet, he rubbished the Human Rights Act, suggesting that it was "only about the rights of individuals (I am unable to find a list of social responsibilities attached to it) and this betrays a fundamental distortion in social and legal thinking". In another letter to Lord Irvine, written in June 2001, he expressed his worry that the act "will only encourage people to take up causes which will make the pursuit of a sane, civilised and ordered existence ever more difficult", and added that "I, and countless others, dread the very real and growing prospect of an American-style personal injury culture becoming ever more prevalent in this country."

Friends admire him as intelligent and conscientious but, perhaps unfairly, the death of the Queen is a day many dread

Even if the letters remain private, many are concerned at the prospect of Charles continuing his activism as king. His record suggests that he will find it hard to abandon his campaigning approach. Charles has used the phrase "mobilising" to describe his activities; his critics call it "meddling". They view his involvement in political matters as an abuse of the unspoken understanding that the royal family should merely symbolise power, not wield it. Charles has waited longer to succeed than any previous heir to the throne. As his wait reaches its final stages, the question of how he will channel his political instincts when he finally becomes king is becoming a matter of debate in his court, in Whitehall and among his friends. Preparations are being made for a very different monarchy to that of Queen Elizabeth, who has secured acceptance of the constitutional monarchy in part through her strict silence on political affairs. Charles's friends admire him as intelligent, caring and conscientious, but, perhaps unfairly, the death of the Queen is a day many dread.

"A quiet constitutional revolution is afoot," his friend and biographer Jonathan Dimbleby said last year. "I predict that he will go well beyond what any previous constitutional monarch has ever essayed."

* * *

Charles's life, up to now, has been about how to carve meaning from his seven decades of waiting. "The defining question of his life has been, 'What good can I make of this ill-defined role?'" said one well-placed source. But this project has also created a dilemma over how he should reign, once the wait is over.

Charles gained a place at Trinity College Cambridge in 1967 after passing two A-levels (B in History and C in French). He graduated with a 2:2 in archaeology, anthropology and history. By 1970 he had met Camilla Shand (later Parker-Bowles). Over the next decade he had several girlfriends and by the time he became engaged to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, Camilla had married the cavalry officer, Andrew Parker-Bowles. The royal soap opera soon cranked up into a Hollywood blockbuster: the wedding at St Paul's, the babies, infidelities on both sides, divorce, Diana's shocking death in Paris, national mourning, Elton John at the funeral. The royal family's reputation collapsed under an avalanche of negative press coverage.

I predict that he will go well beyond what any previous constitutional monarch has ever essayed

Jonathan Dimbleby

All this time, Charles had been fashioning a parallel intellectual life, immersing himself in the world of ideas and spirituality. "I was born in 1948, right in the middle of the 20th century, which had dawned amid the gleaming Age of the Machine, the very engine of colossal change in the western world," he wrote in his 2010 treatise Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World. "By the mid-1950s, a frenzy of change was sweeping the world in a wave of postwar modernism ... By the 1960s the industrialised countries were well on the way to creating what many imagined would be a limitless Age of Convenience. Even as a teenager I felt deeply disturbed by what seemed to have become a dangerously short-sighted approach." By the 70s, this feeling had hardened, and Charles began to speak out: "I could see very clearly that we were growing numb to the sacred presence that traditional societies feel very deeply."

The ideas Charles set out in Harmony are dizzyingly eclectic, and, at times, verge on a kind of mysticism. He cites the "grammar" of Islamic art "that underpins the whole of life", the "magical" rhythms of gardens and nature, the timelessness of Christian iconography and the symmetry of 16th-century German astronomy, Thomas Aquinas's "eternal law", the Vedic traditions of India, and Chinese Daoism. He is interested by the idea of "a duty to try and achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the cosmos".

"He is smarter than you think," said one well-placed source. "He reads widely and deeply all the time at night, when he takes time off, when he travels. It is not so much books. He reads papers and is sent them all the time. If a new paper comes in from the University of Georgia on agriculture in the 21st century he'll read it, understand it and send someone a note about it."

In 1984 Charles launched a lifelong war on modern architecture by publicly criticising proposals for an extension to the National Gallery that he said was "like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend". The plans were dropped. Five years later, he wrote a loftily titled book, A Vision of Britain, in which he explained how the urban reconstruction of the 1960s prompted in him a belief that it was "crazy ... to destroy so much of value and by the dictates of fashion throw the baby out with the bathwater". He quoted GK Chesterton in his call to the quiet majority who, he felt, shared his views: "We are the people of England that never have spoken yet."

From the mid-70s onwards, Charles began setting up charities - not as a patron like his mother, but as president, leading meetings and directing them from St James's Palace under the auspices of his charitable foundation, which he launched in 1979. Promoting his beliefs in the fields of health, work, the environment and architecture, his network of organisations came to handle £100m a year in funds. Friends such as the hedge-fund billionaire, Michael Hintze, donated money and the government provided grants. Charles began appointing experts to advise him, such as the former Friends of the Earth leader, Tony Juniper.

St James's Palace became a kind of grand salon for convening the powerful. Charles's "rainforest summit" in 2009 - where he proposed schemes to limit deforestation and reduce climate change - attracted the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. Charles had established his court as a kind of thinktank, a model that may well follow him to Buckingham Palace. According to a source who has known Charles for many years, the charity network, which employs experts on architecture, regeneration, business and the environment, will be slimmed down but will remain "proactive and entrepreneurial".

Some say Charles's activism reflects not just his personality but the era he was born into. He will be the first British monarch to have gone to school - Gordonstoun in Scotland, which he later described as like "Colditz with kilts". The Queen was brought up in an Edwardian household where the women withdrew after dinner so men could talk among themselves, whereas Prince Charles reached adulthood in the late 1960s, and seized the opportunity provided by his unique role to cultivate relationships with the powerful.

Charles has not spoken publicly about how he might approach kingship, and even privately, aides always imply it is a highly delicate issue because it involves talking about a matter of deepest family sadness - the death of his mother. Yet his desire to think of the long-term consequences of human actions, coupled with the ideas expressed in his writings and many public interventions, offer a clue. In 2010, he told an NBC news crew that he felt "born into this position for a purpose". He explained: "I don't want my grandchildren or yours to come along and say to me, 'Why the hell didn't you come and do something about this?'"

* * *

It sometimes seems that Charles is pushing against the limits of his position, testing what is possible for a constitutional monarch in the 21st century. It is an approach that has alarmed many onlookers. "The main difference [between Charles and his mother] is that the Queen is frightfully discreet about these things and will mention them in private meetings with the prime minister," said a former senior government official. "Prince Charles is much more pushy and writes letters about his views which are on the edge of the mainstream. He pushes them hard and takes a risk. He is much more activist."

Since the beginning of 2012, Prince Charles has held 27 meetings with government ministers. The agendas are kept secret by both the palace and Whitehall, but we know that he has previously lobbied ministers over NHS policy, foxhunting, farming policy, grammar schools and human rights laws. Clarence House says the meetings are essential to the Prince "understanding the workings of government, its departments and its senior members". This knowledge will be necessary, it suggests, when he becomes king.

Over the years, Charles has adopted a number of like-minded politicians as allies. He got to know the former anti-apartheid campaigner, Peter Hain, after he became secretary of state for Wales in 2002. At the time, Hain used to send the prince short briefings twice a year to let him know what was happening in Wales. Later, he began meeting Charles on-on-one at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire mansion, and at his London palace, Clarence House. They discovered a shared enthusiasm for complementary medicine and forged an alliance to introduce it into the NHS. "We just got talking about it," said Hain. "And, as a result, I tried to get the Welsh health minister to run a pilot where GPs could use certain recognised and established complementary therapists, whether osteopaths, chiropractors, nutritionists, homeopaths and acupuncturists." The attempt failed, but in 2007, when Hain was Northern Ireland secretary, he launched a trial, which "absolutely thrilled" the prince.

Prince Charles on his tour of Chester. Photograph: David Levene

Charles took a close interest in Hain's progress. He listened to Hain's interviews on Radio 4's Today programme and gave feedback on his performances. "He wanted to persuade, as I did, the secretary of state for health and colleagues in government to do the same kind of pilot study [on the effectiveness of complementary medicine]," said Hain. "I would speak to colleagues and he would approach it in whatever way he chose. I think it involved letters and meetings. He encouraged me and I encouraged him." During this period, the pair shared a dinner with their wives in the upstairs dining room at Clarence House. Despite the formality of the protocols, Hain said that Charles was "full of humour" and "easy to talk to". Charles sipped a soft drink while the others enjoyed wine from the royal cellar.

Whether it was due to his alliance with Hain or his effort through other channels, the prince's campaign worked. In 2005 his charity, the Foundation for Integrated Health, began receiving £1.1m in Department of Health grants to advise on the regulation of massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and other complementary therapies.

From 1997 to 2003, Michael Meacher, MP for Oldham West and Royton, who was then environment secretary, became another of Charles's cabinet allies. At that time, a debate was raging over whether the UK should allow genetically modified crops to be grown commercially in the UK. In 2008 Charles told the Daily Telegraph that the development of GM crops would be "the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time". Tony Blair was in favour of GM crops and complained to Peter Mandelson that Charles's lobbying was "unhelpful". (Mandelson later described it as "anti-scientific and irresponsible in the light of food shortages in the developing world".)

Meacher, who was sympathetic to the prince's views, soon received an invitation to Highgrove. "As we went through the Highgrove gardens, I found myself alone with him when we got to a particular place and I think that was probably arranged," Meacher said. "On climate change and on organic farming, we had shared views. We had agreed objectives and we were both going to do what we could to achieve them." At receptions with the prince, Meacher would sometimes "get a message from one of his aides" saying the prince wants to have a word with him. Meacher said he was "obviously pleased" with such invitations. During his time in the cabinet, Charles wrote him eight or nine "encouraging" letters about climate change and the environment.

There is no sign that Charles has let up in recent years. Since the beginning of the year he has held meetings with nine ministers in the UK and Scottish governments including David Cameron, George Osborne and Alex Salmond. In just three days in September he met Liz Truss, the environment secretary, Brandon Lewis, housing minister and John Hayes, transport minister. Then there are the dinners at Highgrove, the prolific letter-writing, and campaigning by the 15 charities of which he is president. It is clear that Charles's "mobilising" machine is running at a high voltage. Will he be willing to step away from the controls when he becomes king? Paul Flynn, a member of the commons political and constitutional reform committee, has predicted that unless he does so, there will be "a big confrontation between the monarchy and parliament".

* * *

On a warm September day, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall stepped out of a Bentley on to a council estate in Chester, having hopped over from RAF Northholt in a private jet that morning. On the back seats of the car were "his and hers" cushions in case the creamy leather upholstery was insufficiently comfortable. Charles had come to Chester for a day of walkabouts.

Charles at a primary school in Lache, which he last visited in 1972, on the outskirts of Chester. Photograph: David Levene

Within seconds of arriving at his first stop, a primary school in the suburb of Lache, Charles was burbling greetings in a husky baritone to a line of dignitaries who wore pinstripes and fascinators. For a man who is supposed to worry a lot, Charles seemed relaxed - his skin was tanned and his suit immaculate. Somehow alert and detached at once, he skilfully picked people out from the crowd and spent a little time with each of them. He looked for moments of humour and broke into an infectious laugh as often as he could.

Every day, Charles must negotiate some extraordinarily banal conversations, which is inevitable when you initiate small talk with 20 people in 15 minutes, as he did here.

Charles: "What are these bulbs?"

Teacher: "Spring bulbs".

Charles: "Oh, well done."

If he was bored (and he mostly didn't look it), he could be forgiven. A plaque commemorates his last visit to the school. It was 1972. He has been a long time in the same job.

Outside the school gate I asked locals about his impending accession to the throne. Suddenly we were back in the 1990s, the royal family's lowest ebb in recent memory. John Schofield, 74, a retired local government officer was talking to his neighbour Bryan Williams, 47, a gas fitter, before the royal motorcade arrived. Schofield said he liked the family "but I don't think he should be king because of the divorce". Williams agreed. "The crown should go down a generation," he said. "I think Charles is a bit too old and he has been in his mother's wake so long. And a lot of people thought so highly of Diana and her sons have taken on everything she stood for."

A popularity poll in June for ComRes suggested there could be a profound slump in public affection for the monarchy when Charles takes the reins. He scored 43% approval against the Queen's 63%. One former cabinet minister I spoke to agreed with the widespread view that Charles's relationship with Diana was the biggest factor in public antipathy towards him.

"People outside the metropolitan bubble, the people who really care about the monarchy, are still quite upset about what happened," said Catherine Mayer, an editor-at-large of Time Magazine, whose biography of Charles will be published next year. "They are inclined to believe a fiction which sees him as a cynic, an experienced older man who married a much younger bride and then treated her badly."

Even so, Charles strongly believes he has a public mandate to engage with the political side of public life. His allies argue that his right to engage with government is rooted in a profound connection with the British people - not least through hundreds of public engagements each year. He is, they say, "well-placed to relay public opinion [to ministers] on a number of issues".

In 2010 he successfully blocked Richard Rogers's £3bn modernist redevelopment of the Qatar-owned Chelsea Barracks site by complaining to the prime minister of Qatar that it was another "brutalist" development of the kind responsible for "the destruction" of London. At that time, Charles's then private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, said it was his "duty to make sure the views of ordinary people that might not otherwise be heard receive some exposure". Rogers, among others, disagreed. Mr Justice Vos, presiding over a related high court case, criticised Charles's intervention as "unexpected and unwelcome".

But how far should he go in speaking out? On his trip to Canada in May this year, he waded into the Ukraine crisis, telling a 78-year old Jewish woman who had fled the Nazis that Vladimir Putin was "doing just about the same as Hitler". Putin said the statement was unacceptable and "not what kings do". Foreign Office diplomats might have been alarmed, but 51% of British people polled by YouGov said the comments were appropriate and only 36% disapproved.

Many of those who know Charles well believe that, as king, he will not adopt the same discreet style as his mother. As one source put it: "The man the public has seen for the last 40 years is the man the prince is." "He will be true to his beliefs in his contributions," said another source, who has known Prince Charles for many years. "Rather than a complete reinvention to become a monarch in the mould of his mother, the strategy will be to try and continue with his heartfelt interventions, albeit checking each for tone and content to ensure it does not damage the monarchy." Another source spelled out the possible new rules of engagement: "Speeches will have to pass the following test: would it seem odd because the Queen wouldn't have said it - or would it seem dangerous?"

His allies offer assurances that there is no cause for concern. Firstly, they argue that Charles and his officials already have a close working relationship with government and that Charles's team at Clarence House usually shares with ministerial aides any speeches that touch on policy, so that they are ready to iron out problems in advance. Yet it is hard to believe, for instance, that Whitehall cleared Charles's comments about the "tragedy" of the government's slow response, in February, to the floods in southern England.

He will have very firm advice when he comes into office to overcome the habits of a lifetime

What's more, they say, King Charles simply won't have as much time to "mobilise". The monarch's schedule is weighed down by the daily red box of state papers, investitures and formal meetings with incoming and outgoing diplomats and clergy. That, too, sounds a little unrealistic, given the plentiful evidence of the prince's appetite for activism. But one source, who has known him for years, dismissed such concerns: "In private moments, at the end of the day and talking freely, he gets frustrated that people don't think he doesn't understand it is a completely different job being head of state."

"He fundamentally gets the role that the monarch plays in our constitution," one source said. "What politicians are, the monarch is not. Politicians are inherently divisive because they are not standing for the nation. Politicians think in five year cycles, but the monarch thinks long-term."

Meacher said he believes Charles wants to influence politicians when he is king. But, Meacher argued, there should be more transparency, and the public has "a right to know if the king has taken an interest in [an issue] and has written to the relevant minister". Others think Charles must desist altogether. "He will have very firm advice when he comes into office to overcome the habits of a lifetime," said a former top Whitehall official.

* * *

The night before Charles's trip to Chester, four members of Republic, the national campaign for an elected head of state, were plotting the end of the monarchy over carrot cake and tea in a neat suburban house on the outskirts of Altrincham. The area around Manchester and Liverpool, two cities with radical political histories, is a relative stronghold for Republic, but the group still has only 15 regular local activists. Inside the house, flyers and #bornequal badges covered the dining room table, while a banner demanding a republic flopped over a toy. The republicans were preparing to run stalls at Wigan Diggers, a festival celebrating the life of Gerard Winstanley, a Cromwell-era political reformer, and at the Live a Better Life vegan festival, where they planned to focus on the royal family's love of hunting.

Republicanism is still a taboo, the activists said. (In polls over the past decade, support for Britain becoming a republic has remained at only 10 to 20%.) They spoke about embracing their beliefs as if they were coming out of the closet. "I've had feelings along these lines for a long time without knowing where to go with it," said Terry Bates. "And then 30 years later I find out I am not alone in feeling like that." For Bates, the moment of truth came at a packed rugby league stadium in Wigan, when he decided to stay seated as the national anthem was played. "I realised this needed to be my protest in front of 32,000 people in the ground," he said. "Now if I hear it on TV I walk out of the room."

With the Duchess of Cornwall - and Grace the golden eagle outside Chester cathedral. Photograph: David Levene

Charles, said Bates, is a useful "recruiting sergeant" in the republican cause. "Are people going to be singing 'God save our gracious king' with quite as much enthusiasm?" agreed Helen Guest, 36, a former nursing sister. "I don't think so."

But if the middle-aged, beige-clad crowd pressed up against the fence of Chester Cathedral at the royal couple's second event of the day is any indicator, then the answer is yes. Charles and Camilla shook hands, posed for photos and accepted gifts. According to Charles's allies, talk of William and Kate "eclipsing" the prince underestimates his popularity with the baby boomer generation, which remains a key constituency for Charles. In Chester, he seemed to be shoring up support with every handshake.

Inside the cathedral, the strangeness of Prince Charles's life came into focus. Around one corner a choir performed a piece by Charles's favourite composer, CMH Parry. Some modernist choir stalls, installed 15 years ago, caught his disapproving eye. "Doesn't quite go," the prince announced, locking eyes with the senior churchman. "It may be time for a review." Around the next corner were members of the Mercian regiment of soldiers, waiting to shake hands with the prince. Behind them was a group of earnest amateur dramatists, who were poised to enact part of a mystery play. They wore what looked like M&S pashminas as biblical headdresses. Finally, in the cloister, Charles was invited to hold Grace the golden eagle, a magnificent bird who, moments earlier, had evacuated her bowels explosively onto this reporter's notebook.

The day ended with a trip to see a plane wing being assembled at the Airbus factory at Broughton and a reception for the industrial cadets programme, which Charles supports as part of his aim to encourage more young people to take up engineering. Improbably, the meticulously planned cocktail of engagements reflected his interests. Charles had done his bit for the nation's education, youth, faith, heritage, and industry - all in the space of three and a half hours, before his jet roared off into the sky to take him back to London. About an hour's flight - long enough perhaps, for three or four more black spider memos that the rest of us may never see.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter: @gdnlongread

What kind of King will Charles III be? The long read: When Prince Charles becomes king, will he be able to stop his compulsive 'meddling'? And if he can't, what will it mean for the monarchy and the United Kingdom? 35 false The Guardian true http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2014/11/19/1416400893972/Prince-Charles-004.jpg 5083 true 452164206 82056 false 546b7310e4b018fc4f4afbfb 9650798 false Robert Booth 2014-11-20T00:00:00Z 2194794 UK false 2014-11-22T17:30:00Z

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Leaders of European cities make pledge to tackle climate change;
Representatives of 30 cities gather in Paris to sign declaration that will also commit them to use their (EURO)10bn purchasing power to buy eco-friendly

BYLINE: Kim Willsher in Paris

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 267 words

Leaders and representatives of 30 European cities will gather in Paris on Thursday to declare their commitment to "clean" policies to fight climate change.

Officials will also sign a declaration agreeing to use their collective purchasing power - estimated at around (EURO)10bn (£7.4bn) a year - to buy eco-friendly.

Related: Full text of climate change statement signed by 26 European mayors

The gathering comes eight months before Paris hosts the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP21, aimed at achieving a binding, universal and international agreement on climate for the first time in more than 20 years of UN negotiations.

In a joint statement signed by 26 European mayors, including London's Boris Johnson, city representatives said they hoped combining forces to favour green and low-carbon industries for procurement contracts would have a "leverage effect on the private sector that very often aligns its own requirements with the public sector".

"[The] time has now come for European capitals and metropolises to pool our efforts to tackle climate change. This requires a closer dialogue between cities through a more regular exchange of expertise and good practices," they declared.

The mayors will arrive at Paris' city hall in electric Autolib' cars, from the city's car-sharing service, decorated in the colours of their country.

The summit comes a week after Paris was declared the most polluted city on the planet after a choking cloud almost obscured its most symbolic monuments including the Eiffel Tower and left the city of light looking more like the capital of smog.

LOAD-DATE: March 26, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate change: farmers urge Coalition to restore emissions trading scheme;
Failure to acknowledge the problem is 'doing the industry a disservice' and harming Australia's international standing, says farming group

BYLINE: Gabrielle Chan

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 872 words

A delegation of farmers has called for the Abbott government to act on climate change by restoring an emissions trading scheme, maintaining the current renewable energy target and spending on rail infrastructure to improve inland transport and reduce carbon emissions.

The farmers have spent two days lobbying the Coalition to start implementing a suite of policies to deal with the effects of climate change, warning of dire consequences for the agriculture sector if the threat was not addressed.

They have told the government MPs, including John Cobb and the staff of the treasurer Joe Hockey, that the Direct Action policy, which provides incentives for polluters to reduce carbon emissions, will not work to ameliorate climate change, "but if the government wants to give away money, people will keep taking it".

The delegation said the lack of climate policies was being exacerbated by the cuts to research and development funding for applied climate science and the Bureau of Meteorology.

The visit came as intense negotiations between the government and Labor continued over the RET, which currently requires the government to source 41,000 gigawatt hours of energy from renewables by 2020. The latest government offer to Labor is 32,000GWh.

It also follows a report by University of Melbourne researchers called Appetite for Change, which charted the detrimental effects of climate change on Australia's food production.

The farmers, organised by Earth Hour Australia, said the Abbott government needed to show leadership on the issue and it could start by using the term climate change, rather than "climate variability".

John Pettigrew, who has an irrigation property at Bunbartha north of Shepperton, said calling climate change "variability" was "doing everyone a disservice".

"We are not going to revert to where we were 10 years ago," said Pettigrew. "There will be highs and lows, but the trend is there. We saw it through the millennium drought and failing to acknowledge the problem is only adding to it.

"It's doing the industry a disservice. It's about how the industry is perceived by overseas buyers. Already in dairy, large multinational companies are demanding environment and carbon emission recording to show it's been factored in.

"The Australian government's international perception is not good [on climate change] and that is an impediment to us being able to get into high-value markets."

Peter Holding, who runs a 1500-hectare farm at Harden west of Canberra, said the science indicated that climate change was a bigger issue than the weather and Australia needed to protect its international reputation.

"We want to see some leadership, we are tired of platitudes and saying it can't happen, we are losing markets because Australia's reputation is slipping on being clean and green," Holding said.

"Climate change going to have impacts right across the budget from dislocation of whole rural communities to drought assistance.

"We need infrastructure spending and new industries in the renewable energy sector. Governments have to start thinking on policies that last a bit longer than a three year term."

Holding said while some carbon farming initiatives such as methane capture in piggeries were effective, Direct Action was generally rolling out slowly and farmers and researchers remain unconvinced the policy will meet any targets.

"People will be more than willing to accept the funding but we - and the research - are not convinced you can make a difference to climate change by doing it and therefore it is a waste of precious government funds, but if the government wants to give away money, people will keep taking it" said Holding.

Sid Plant, a grazier on the Darling Downs in Queensland, would like to see an emissions trading scheme, like the one first negotiated in 2009 by Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Ian Macfarlane.

Plant said he was hopeful that "something sensible" on emissions trading was proposed because he believes it would allow farmers to benefit from increasing organic carbon in the soil, which had added benefits for the farm as well as turning a profit.

"I hoped to position myself to have carbon to sell and it might not pay a lot but there will be benefits for increasing organic carbon, such as retaining more moisture," he said.

Plant's family has farmed for seven generations and he first had to study weather patterns to get his pilot's licence. He first noticed the El Nino pattern in 1973 and learned to apply the science to better manage his cattle. Under a changing climate, Plant no longer keeps a breeding herd so that he can sell down as soon as the weather turns dry. He is convinced he will not see much rain from now until Christmas.

"The most significant part of climate change is declining rainfall, which applies to most of Queensland," Plant said.

"Australian farmers are feeling climate change as early as anybody in the world, and significantly, we have the world's highest year to year rainfall variability.

"Climate change is coming over the top and when the UN sees our farmers as leading the world, we seem to be running out of bright ideas without the right policies. I want to save world for my grandchildren.

"I find it very difficult to find someone to vote for."

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Keep it in the Ground campaign: six things we've learned;
It's been a few weeks since we launched our major climate change project. Here's what we have learned so far

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 775 words

1. It would be catastrophic to burn most of the fossil fuels in the ground

This was the consensus reached by the collection of journalists that met in January to plan the project. It's also the consensus reached by many of the world's most prolific scientists, economists and statesmen.

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England has warned that "the vast majority of reserves are unburnable" while Desmond Tutu has called for an apartheid style boycott of fossil fuel companies. Barack Obama has said simply: "We're not going to be able to burn it all".

To avoid catastrophic and runaway consequences, the increase in global temperatures must be kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Yet the oil, gas and coal reserves that companies plan to burn will emit quantities of carbon that will take us well beyond that target. If we continue on our current trajectory, international scientists estimate we will exceed the 2C rise by mid-century. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground to avoid this.

2. The international climate negotiations are silent on the issue

"You've been negotiating all my life," said Canadian student Anjali Appadurai as she stood on the podium at the 2011 international climate conference in Durban, South Africa. In the 23-year history of these negotiations, there has as yet been no mention of keeping fossil fuels in the ground. The focus has been on regulating emissions, not on regulating production.

"Breaking such silences requires a conscious and painful effort," writes George Monbiot in his piece on the issue. "It seemed so obvious, so overwhelming, that I couldn't understand why it wasn't on everyone's lips. Before writing about it, I circled the topic like a dog investigating a suspicious carcass. Why, I wondered, is no one touching this? Is it toxic?"

3. But there is hope - and it doesn't depend on Paris

In December, representatives from 196 countries will meet to negotiate an international agreement on climate change. As important as this will be, the climate fight won't wait for Paris, argues environmental campaigner Bill McKibben.

He is the founder of 350.org, a global climate movement that has founded the fastest growing divestment campaign in history. It targets institutions - from universities to pension funds to faith organisations - and asks them to move their investments out of the fossil fuel industry.

4. The Gates Foundation's fossil fuel investments run into the billions

According to a Guardian analysis of their most recent tax filings, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have a minimum of $1.4bn (£1bn) invested in oil, coal and gas companies. These endowments are held by 35 of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, according to rankings of their reserves.

Despite declaring that climate change demands that the world "moves much more aggressively - right now", the world's largest charitable foundation refused to comment on fossil fuel investment. A spokesman for Bill Gates' private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."

5. The Wellcome Trust will not divest despite excluding some fossil fuel companies

At least £450m worth of the Wellcome Trust's £18bn endowment is invested in Shell, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and BP. The foundation has refused the Guardian's call for it to divest, arguing that the campaign is only a "grand gesture" and that engagement with the companies "offers a better prospect for change than divestment". However, last week the Guardian revealed that Wellcome disposed of $138m (£94m) it had invested in ExxonMobil, the oil company that has funded climate change denial.

6. You care (so does Tilda Swinton, the minister for energy and climate change and some of the world's most senior scientists)

In the past 10 days, more than 140,000 of you have signed our petition asking the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to commit to divesting from fossil fuels and to immediately freeze any new investments.

Tilda Swinton, Yotam Ottolenghi and Bianca Jagger have added their support to the cause. Ed Davey, minister for energy and climate change has given the campaign his strong backing, while calling for divestment from "very risky" coal assets.

Some of Europe's most senior scientists have also spoken out. Professor Anne Glover, former chief scientific adviser to the European commission said:

These are leaders. These are people that others look to. So they have enormous responsibility. That's why for me it is important that they react to this.

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

How are Ben & Jerry's fighting climate change?;
Ben and Jerry's are taking to the streets, armed with a climate change message and free ice-cream

BYLINE: Unilever

SECTION: UNILEVER PARTNER ZONE

LENGTH: 226 words

Ben & Jerry's is calling for ice-cream fans to join the fight for a 100% clean energy future through the save our swirled climate tour.

The year long campaign, which kicked off on 18 March, aims to inspire people around the world to support the global climate movement by joining international campaigning organisation Avaaz and calling on world leaders to support the transition to 100% clean energy by 2050. This year, Ben & Jerry's wants to get 500,000 ice-cream fans involved in tackling climate change.

Related: Why eliminating landfill waste makes sound business sense

For Ben & Jerry's, climate change is not just about polar bears and ice sheets, it's also about people and it's an issue of economic and social justice. Climate change is a serious threat to the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, which has largely been caused by wealthy, developed nations of the global north. Now, the least developed nations of the global south are most at risk and have the least resources to adapt to a rapidly warming world.

Find out more about Ben & Jerry's work and help Avaaz deliver 3,000,000 signatures on their 100% Clean Power Petition on the eve of a historic climate summit in Paris in December 2015.

Content on this page is paid for and provided by Unilever, sponsor of the sustainable living hub

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

'Next two decades are decisive on climate change' - video;
The next two decades are decisive for how we respond to climate change challenges, Lord Stern told TED@Unilever

BYLINE: Unilever

SECTION: UNILEVER PARTNER ZONE

LENGTH: 296 words

"Our planet is facing two fundamental changes over the next two decades which will determine whether the next 100 years will be the best or the worst of centuries," climate economist, Lord Stern, told TED@Unilever in New York.

Speaking just before the UN Climate Summit, Stern outlined how the basic structure of the world's economies and societies - both rich and poor - will change with profound implications for energy use, the availability of land and water and the planet's forests.

"Now, the first of these transformations is going to happen anyway," he said. "We have to decide whether to do it well or badly, the economic, or structural, transformation. But the second of the transformations, the climate transformations, we have to decide to do. Those two transformations face us in the next two decades. The next two decades are decisive for what we have to do."

However, these transformations also bring huge opportunities for how we design our cities, where we get our energy from and how way we manage our land if we take action and make good decisions now.

Stern said: "We need political pressure to build. We need leaders to step up. We can have better growth, better climate, a better world. We can make, by managing those two transformations well, the next 100 years the best of centuries."

Copy on this page is provided by Unilever, supporter of the sustainable living hub

Read more stories like this :

· Why has 'microhydro' been neglected as solution to energy poverty?· After the Taliban: taking solar energy to remote parts of Afghanistan· Chile's solar market is leading the way in South America· Advertisement feature: Clean energy revolution in Uganda

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Liz Truss rejects call for MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels;
Caroline Flint also declines to support divestment during public debate on green policies held by Green Alliance and consortium of environmental NGOs

BYLINE: Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 503 words

The Conservative environment secretary, Liz Truss, has said she would not request the MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels.

She told the Guardian: "I believe the right way [to affect investment] is through carbon reduction targets."

Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow energy secretary, said she would "look into it". She declined to support divestment and said the debate over divestment should be about setting the right conditions for long-term investment in environmental sustainability.

The MPs were speaking to the Guardian on the fringes of a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election, held by the Green Alliance and a consortium of environmental NGOs.

The MPs' pension fund is a key target of a Guardian campaign calling for it to move away from its fossil fuel investments, reasoning that much of the world's fossil fuel reserve will need to be kept in the ground if greenhouse gas emissions targets are to be met and the ravages predicted from climate change are to be avoided.

Ed Davey, the LibDem energy secretary, told the debate that he supported divestment away from coal, but not gas as it would continue to be needed, and which currently makes up 80% of the UK's energy use. He said this move was already happening.

He said: "The way pension funds are going they are interested in placing their money in what they see as sustainable forms of investment. To give incentives we need decarbonisation targets. I would make a distinction between coal and oil and gas."

He also called for more transparency for investors. "If you look at the work of the Bank of England, the Bank of Brazil, the Bank of South Africa, you need to ensure investors have real disclosure about the assets of the companies they are investing in, [to see whether they are] building assets or long-term liabilities. Investor disclosure is one thing we can push through."

Caroline Lucas, the Green party's only MP, said she was enthusiastically calling for divestment through the MPs' pension fund and others.

The MPs were also asked about the future of shale gas in the UK, with Lucas firmly opposed while the others said they supported shale gas development with good regulation. Flint said: "We're not setting our faces against shale gas - we will need gas for years to come." She said Labour had put forward a variety of measures for environmental protection and regulation on shale drilling in the infrastructure bill. Davey said producing shale gas in the UK was greener than importing gas from Qatar.

Truss said: "We have done a lot of work on the risk. Provided we have the right protections in place, it can have minimal impact on the environment. There is already onshore oil and gas in this country [without the use of fracking technology and] which has the support of local residents. Just like other forms of energy, shale has to go through local planning protections put in place by DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change]. It really is very heavily protected - that is right the approach."

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Life in the Philippines: preparing for the next typhoon Haiyan;
The Philippines is battered by some 20 typhoons a year - events that will get more severe with climate change. Yet, post Haiyan millions of Filipinos remain vulnerable and underprepared for future such disasters

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1568 words

In 2013, the Philippines had so many typhoons that it ran out of letters to name them. For the first time, the country had got to the end of the alphabet for typhoon names and had to start at 'a' again.

The letter 'y' proved most devastating. Typhoon Yolanda - known internationally as Haiyan - tore through a swathe of the Philippines on 8 November 2013, leaving more than 6,300 people dead. Nearly 2,000 are still listed as missing.

The winds reached 196 miles per hour, the waves nearly 8m. Boulders the size of blue whales were dislodged. The unprecedented ferocity of Haiyan gouged wounds into the Filipino national psyche, causing apprehension about the future.

Sixteen months on from the disaster - and just days after the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu suffered a similar fate at the hands of Cyclone Pam - the typhoon-ravaged area is back on its feet with a couple of thousand people out of the four million displaced lacking at least a temporary home. But while the damage and loss of life has triggered some improvements, millions of people remain stuck in a situation where they are at acute risk from escalating climate change-driven disasters.

Richard Sandison, emergency response manager at Plan International Philippines, arrived a week after Haiyan. He says the country is now starting to get its head around the disaster.

"It was very distressing, there were a lot of dead bodies on the roads and in rivers," Sandison recalls. "People were walking around aimlessly, conveying a sense of hopelessness.

"I've seen people grow remarkably since then. Children who were afraid of the rain are now playing in the rain and in the sea. It's remarkable to see the difference in the past 14 months; it's inspiring.

"People are now a lot more aware of the need to be evacuated to safer areas, to do it early and not leave it to the last minute."

Haiyan offered a grim case study on how climate change is a live issue for the Philippines. The IPCC predicts that climate change is likely to cause tropical cyclones to become "more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation" - a nightmarish scenario for a country already battered by around 20 typhoons a year.

"We live in a new normal now and it can be hard for people to understand that things are different now," says Alexander Pama, undersecretary of the national civil defence agency.

"I used to be an officer in the navy and we would measure typhoons. Towards the latter part of my career, we were seeing a change in the patterns, the strength was getting stronger. Even the length of the typhoons is defying tradition."

Typhoons are not the Philippines' only blight. The country lies on the Pacific 'ring of fire', making it prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Centrally located mountains dip sharply at the coast, putting coastal communities at risk from deadly landslides.

"Here in the Philippines we are cursed by all kinds of disasters," says Pama of one of the most naturally volatile countries on Earth, which also has its fair share of human-induced strife.

Following Haiyan, the Philippines was hit with what Pama calls the "second surge" - a wave of NGOs and international aid agencies. With their good intentions and myriad acronyms, the agencies occasionally offered things the Philippines didn't really need - such as rice that was still available from the country's agricultural regions - but now appear to be co-ordinating well with each other to provide shelter, health and education to the populace, 11 million of whom were affected in some way by the typhoon. The European Union agency ECHO has provided (EURO)30m (£21m) in support, distributing food to 1.2 million people and emergency shelter to a further three million.

Individual countries from around the world also pitched in, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, Norway to Indonesia. The US government pledged $37m (£25m), the UK £77m and Australia A$30m (£15m).

Aid agencies - Plan International, Save the Children, the Red Cross and others - gathered under the UN's cluster system, which groups charities together to help in certain areas, such as shelter, health and education.

The focus has now shifted to preparing for the next disaster, a daunting task with millions of Filipinos living in flimsy wooden houses beside the coast. The rebuilding has been swift - aid agencies praise the rebound of the Philippines compared to, say, Haiti - but the process of making the country more resilient to a looming future of more Haiyans has been frustratingly slow in parts.

The city of Tacloban, an epicentre of the Haiyan disaster, has scrambled to its feet with some visible scars - the mass graves remain, as do some of the crunched roofs. Rebuilding of large public buildings bears the lessons of Haiyan - new schools have grills on windows; reinforced concrete beams and bolts in the ceiling that allow the roof to judder a little in high winds without ripping away.

But large areas of housing are still highly vulnerable. In the district on Anibong, signs declaring the coast a 'no build zone' after Haiyan have been disregarded and houses have been rebuilt in the same place, in the same way.

In an ideal world, people would move inland, away from the storm surges, into sturdy cyclone-resistant houses. But many Filipinos are dependent on fishing. Tens of thousands of boats were destroyed by the typhoon, along with millions of coconut trees - another valuable source of income.

"We thought the world was ending," says Osias Grefiel, 58, a fisherman on the east coast of the East Samar province. Locals recall huge waves, coral being washed into their houses. For many of these, their homes and livelihoods were destroyed.

"I cried, like I had lost a family member" Grefiel says of his own lost boat. "I have nine children. I was scared. I want to get transferred to higher ground, but then, there's the sap sap [the tasty local fish that is the basis of his income]."

Aid agencies, led by the UN, are helping to diversify incomes, as well as highlighting how sustainability can help alleviate natural disaster. Progress has been made, for example, on the restoration of coastal mangroves that will, come the next big typhoon, act as a crucial buffer.

There's only so much that the outside world can do about Filipino politics, however. Locals complain that political opponents of the president, Benigno S Aquino II, have been denied funds.

Tacloban's mayor, Alfred S Romualdez, nephew of famed shoe aficionado Imelda Marcos, falls into this category. So does the head of Tigdaranao, a small island barangay, or village. It's partially-built typhoon shelter needs just $20,000to finish it - money that has not been forthcoming.

In lieu of the shelter, a man runs around the village with a red flag on a stick while a metal pole is clanged to warn of an approaching typhoon. Residents then assemble in the school, one of the only concrete buildings on Tigdaranao. It feels painfully inadequate, and entirely avoidable.

Now at least people heed the flood warnings. "People were saying 'please evacuate as your area is prone to flash floods'," Pama says of one family warned of the typhoon. "The matriarch says 'I'm 70 that has never happened'. Unfortunately that did happen and practically the whole family was washed away."

Procedures have been put in place to warn and evacuate people who are in the path of typhoons. Residents now understand the term 'storm surge' is something to be concerned about and there is an impressive level of unity and co-operation among the communities that are left to deal with the worst when it arrives.

But some people are even more vulnerable than they were before Haiyan. While the focus has been on rebuilding coastal areas, those inland who were devastated have been left in NGO-built temporary homes because they are unable to afford permanent, solid structures that would fare better in high winds and floods.

"The rain water gets in here," says 58-year-old Flocertina Macabocsit, touching the thin walls of her temporary wooden home. Eight family members live in a property roughly the size of upmarket hotel's bathroom.

"We are very worried about future typhoons. I want to stay here because I grew up here, but we want a stronger house. We had typhoons every year but Yolanda was different. It was shocking.

"I never thought about the level of destruction before, but now I imagine it. We think our homes will be destroyed again."

Macabocsit has a community centre she can flee to when a typhoon strikes, but others aren't so lucky. Although each Filipino province sets aside 5% of its budget for disaster preparedness, with the national government putting more effort into better planning rather than just mopping up, emergency shelter is still lacking.

Worryingly, more than a year after Haiyan, there have been no new evacuation centres built in East Samar, one of the worst hit regions. Less than a third of citizens have somewhere to go if a typhoon strikes - with private housing making up the bulk of evacuation centres.

"I admit we still have to do more," says Jinnah Mae L Librio, of the regional government's disaster preparedness team. "What we're given is never really enough."

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

The Thorny Task of Advocating Good Corporate Behavior

BYLINE: By STEVEN DAVIDOFF SOLOMON.

Steven Davidoff Solomon is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. His columns can be found at nytimes.com/dealbook. Follow @StevenDavidoff on Twitter.

SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEAL PROFESSOR; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 1173 words

In the war to control corporations, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the $300 billion pension fund, has decided that it is willing to actively press companies to emphasize the environment, diversity and good corporate governance, perhaps even at the expense of profitability. It may save the planet by changing the way companies are run, but will it lead to the returns Calpers desperately needs?

The turn came this month at Calpers's board of trustees meeting. The pension fund amended its investment policy for global governance to embrace what is called the corporate sustainability movement, the idea that companies should pay greater heed to the long-term future of themselves and society by adhering to social and environmental principles.

It represents a huge endorsement of the fledgling movement and at first blush seems like a great idea. What could be wrong with trying to improve the environment and society?

But like many things in the world of shareholders and corporations, it quickly becomes complicated.

Calpers's global governance policy reflects how it votes its shares in the more than 67,000 votes it takes part in every year at thousands of companies. The most noticeable change this year was a deletion. Calpers deleted its first principle of corporate governance, which had stated that its investment ''practices should focus the board's attention on optimizing the company's operating performance, profitability and returns to share owners.''

The deleted principle was replaced with a statement that companies that Calpers invests in are ''expected to optimize operating performance, profitability and investment returns in a risk-aware manner while conducting themselves with propriety and with a view toward responsible conduct.'' This type of vague statement often shows up in policy documents. It waters down the profitability part by adding responsible conduct and propriety, whatever that means.

Calpers then added three factors that it asserts create ''long-term value'': corporate ''governance,'' ''environment,'' including climate change, and ''social,'' which includes fair labor practices and board diversity.

Calpers said it might seek to nominate director candidates if a company fails to perform up to these principles. Calpers managers are also expected to adhere to these principles in their investments.

Some of the changes were already reflected in policies adopted over the last few years. But by consolidating them all in one place and stating its position with full force, Calpers and a governance staff of about 20 people are not only fully embracing the corporate sustainability mantra, they are that indicating the pension fund will act to bring companies along with it as it changes the way it invests. Calpers is the largest and most influential of the pension funds, so even if it doesn't assert this authority, other funds may follow its lead.

Corporate sustainability is undoubtedly becoming an increasing phenomenon in corporate America, and not just with shareholders. More and more companies have at least a vice president devoted to sustainable development if not a whole department. It's a noble effort that can have real consequences for good if it succeeds.

But corporate sustainability is also controversial, and it may be doubly so for Calpers.

The first reason is the need for those all-important returns. Calpers was estimated to be underfunded by about 33 percent at the end of 2013 and needs to meet a high annual return goal of 7.5 percent.

A careful reading of the Calpers policy shows that it is asserting that long-term value can be created by adopting these practices. The argument is that returns for companies that adopt these practices will be higher because they help the world and help themselves. This justifies the focus because Calpers, as a pension fund, should be primarily focused on returns and indeed has a fiduciary duty to act in its pension holders' best interests by earning the highest returns it can.

Yet, we just don't know if Calpers's assertion is true. It is uncertain that adopting corporate sustainability policies will in fact increase returns. They might rise, but even Calpers acknowledges the research on this is in its infancy, so they might not. Even more complicated, there is a big debate about what constitutes corporate sustainability. Does it mean disinvestment in fossil fuel companies to work against climate change or fast food chains to make Americans eat healthier? What are good practices toward the environment or employees?

To be fair to Calpers, it is in it for the long term -- it has an investing horizon of forever. And if the world is increasingly a bad place, the companies in it will be, too. Consequently, in a world it hopes to be in forever, Calpers has an incentive to consider the broad picture. This might be fine if only Calpers were advocating its concept of these principles. But companies have thousands of shareholders. As each defines its own concept of sustainability, corporations may be buffeted by competing agendas.

The last, and perhaps thorniest, problem is that corporate sustainability, when it reduces profits over the long term, may in fact be illegal. Many United States public companies are incorporated in Delaware, whose courts have consistently ruled that companies have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits. Indeed, Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr. argued recently that corporate sustainability misunderstands Delaware law and that it ''is not only hollow but also injurious to social welfare to declare that directors can and should do the right thing by promoting interests other than stockholder interests.''

That might appear coldhearted, but it underscores that corporations have the latitude to do good within their profit-maximizing context. Corporations give to charities and take social positions all the time. Consider the ''Race Together'' campaign at Starbucks, which pursued corporate sustainability. Although it was pursuing a noble goal, however misguided some thought it was for a corporation, Starbucks was trying to be more attractive to Americans so they would buy more coffee there. By focusing on profits, companies avoid the battle over whose social purpose they should adopt.

I spoke with Ann Simpson, senior portfolio manager and director of corporate governance at Calpers, who explained that the pension fund was not looking to ''maximize corporate profits'' but rather has its own fiduciary duties to its retirees to ''optimize'' its own returns over multiple generations. She further explained that ''optimize'' means ''looking at the balance between different considerations'' and maximizing among those.

It is this profit versus purpose conundrum that Calpers finds itself in. It has the power to push companies, willingly or not, toward corporate sustainability, particularly if it starts nominating directors.

Whether it will make the money Calpers needs, let alone change the world, is another story.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/business/dealbook/the-thorny-task-of-advocating-good-corporate-behavior.html

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY HARRY CAMPBELL)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Vanuatu won't be the last poor country devastated by climate change inaction;
Oxfam's CEO argues that we need a new, ambitious framework to reduce the risk of climate-driven poverty getting dramatically worse

BYLINE: Mark Goldring

SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

LENGTH: 955 words

As the world keeps warming, it is expected that both the speed of winds and the amount of rainfall associated with tropical cyclones will increase. And as sea levels rise, storm surges and other coastal flooding will only get worse.

For Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations, cyclone Pam has been the worst-case scenario: in Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital, 90% of the housing has been badly damaged; kids have nowhere to go to school, and the town's hospital was left with no power. In the country's outer islands, where most people live, about a quarter of a million people had little or no protection from the cyclone's 160mph winds. And if people cannot get clean water and at least temporary toilets very soon, a "second emergency" could follow from water-borne diseases. That is why the world's focus must be on meeting these urgent needs before any more lives are lost.

Related: Developed nations have sown the wind, Vanuatu has reaped the whirlwind | Andrew Simms

At Oxfam, we are already providing trucks of drinking water to people living in the evacuation centres. We are also distributing kits around the capital that include items designed to maintain high levels of hygiene. We have been carrying out assessments on some of the outlying islands and are working with local organisations to support food supplies amid fears that stocks will run out in two weeks.

No other city in the world is as exposed to disasters as Port Vila - an unenviable distinction recently recorded by the Natural Hazards Risk Atlas. What makes this all the more tragic is that Vanuatu was doing all the right things to prepare for disasters. Its people, government and all the local organisations with which Oxfam works knew only too well how vulnerable Vanuatu was to typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis.

These efforts were not wasted - setting up cyclone evacuation shelters in advance, for example, saved lives - but they could never have equipped this small country for something as big as cyclone Pam.

Last year, I saw in the Philippines that nothing could have prepared the people there for the power of typhoon Haiyan. Even the US struggled to cope with superstorm Sandy, which struck New York, New Jersey and other states in 2012.

So who or what is to blame? According to Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, climate change has contributed to "the level of sea rise ... the cyclone season, the warm, the rain, all this is affected".

Whether we will see a greater number of cyclones as a result of climate change is uncertain, but scientists say one thing is clear: those that we do see are likely to be stronger and more destructive.

This is the threat that the people of Vanuatu and millions of people in coastal or low-lying areas will increasingly face. Millions more in other parts of the world will encounter drought, increased flooding and other hazards.

In a 2013 report, the Met Office and Overseas Development Institute said "climate change and exposure to 'natural' disasters threaten to derail international efforts to eradicate poverty by 2030". According to the same study, by 2030 "up to 325 million extremely poor people will be living in the 49 most hazard-prone countries" in the world.

The world's poorest people are being hit harder and harder by disasters. It was so poignant that, as cyclone Pam was tearing across Vanuatu, the world's governments were gathering in Sendai, Japan, to plot a supposedly bold course to reduce the risk of future disasters.

Back in 2005, in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the international community agreed a 10-year plan - the Hyogo Framework - to make the world safer from natural hazards like typhoons.

But a decade on, all the measures to reduce the risk of disasters are being overwhelmed by the rising tide of calamities the world faces. What was needed was a step change in response. That's why I've been arguing for a new framework with ambitious, measurable targets to reduce the risks for vulnerable people, a target that really ensures local authorities and NGOs have the funding, technical capacity and decision-making power to make meaningful changes where they are most desperately needed. But rather than that, the world's governments have agreed only minimal improvements on the Hyogo Framework.

The Sendai Framework will have its value, but it would have had far more worth if it had gone further, and if wealthy countries had offered far more financial and technical support to the countries struggling to recover from disasters. Back in 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions. The UK's record on contributing its fair share of that has been good. But global progress is slow, and uncertainty of finance for this purpose looms large over countries like Vanuatu.

Cyclone Pam reminds us again that so much more than money is needed. We must recognise that poorer countries like Vanuatu - with the least responsibility for climate change - are already suffering the devastating consequences of inaction. Like every richer country, the UK must act on this stark fact more than ever before. Whoever finds themselves in government after 7 May must lead the way in tackling climate change at home and abroad: in the former, by committing to phase out coal emissions from the British economy by the early 2020s; in the latter, by standing strong on the need for new concrete commitments on climate finance at the UN conference on climate in Paris this December.

My heart goes out to those whose lives have been devastated in the Pacific. But in my head I know the challenge of climate-driven poverty, inequality and disasters is likely to get dramatically worse.

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

BP joins list of companies fleeing Alec;
The oil giant is the latest company to cut ties with the conservative advocacy group known for its controversial stance on climate change

BYLINE: Amy Westervelt

SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

LENGTH: 545 words

British Petroleum is the latest company to pull its membership from the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the oil company announced on Monday. The oil giant is now the third oil and gas company to leave the conservative nonprofit that acts as a lobbying group.

BP's departure follows a wave of exits by tech companies from Alec at the end of last year. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, eBay and Yelp all cut ties with the organization following criticism by environmental nonprofits for drafting model legislation that denies any human contribution to climate change.

However BP spokesperson Brett Clanton did not mention the group's position on climate change in a statement announcing the decision:"We continually assess our engagements with policy and advocacy organizations and based on our most recent assessment, we have determined that we can effectively pursue policy matters of current interest to BP without renewing our membership in Alec."

BP's exit comes a few months after Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) announced that it would depart from Alec, and a year after ConocoPhillips, an American multinational energy corporation, did the same. All companies have stayed tight-lipped about precisely why they've chosen to leave the group, but a proxy statement for Oxy's annual shareholder meeting, held in May 2014, sheds some light on the subject. In it, the Needmor Foundation, which holds 800 shares of Oxy stock, proposes that the company review and evaluate its relationships with various trade groups (pdf). In regards to leaving Alec, the foundation wrote:

Alec has been associated with contentious anti-immigration, voter identification and Stand Your Ground, legislation. More recently, Alec initiatives have opposed climate change policies and efforts to weaken state renewable energy standards with the Heartland Institute. Occidental Petroleum is a member of Alec and funds its work. We believe this partnership may bring significant reputational and business risk to the company.

Oxy's board of directors recommended against the proposal, noting that the company is a member of several trade groups and that a review of all those memberships would be onerous, given that the reputational risk seemed only to be with Alec.

"Occidental contributed only $25,000 in 2011, $12,500 in 2012 and $2,500 in 2013," the board wrote. "This is a small fraction of the more than $10m a year Occidental spends on trade associations and other organizations. Based on the information it has received from such organizations, only approximately 12% of that aggregate amount was used by those organizations for lobbying purposes."

Nonetheless, shareholders were sufficiently concerned about the risks of being associated with Alec that after that meeting Oxy announced its intention to leave the group.

Related: Ebay joins Google and others in dumping Alec over climate stance

Media and public interest groups have speculated that similar factors were at play for BP, but the company insists its decision has more to do with the current economic landscape than any sort of political rift with Alec.

"For us it's more about just prioritizing what we do on the lobbying level and the groups we choose to be members of and where we can get the most bang for our buck," said Clanton.

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Students occupy Swarthmore College in fossil fuel divestment protest;
Wave of sit-ins by divestment campaigners starts at US college founded by Quakers and whose alumni include UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres

BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 559 words

Student activists have occupied a historic hall at Swarthmore College, the alma mater of the United Nations climate chief, demanding the university cut its ties to fossil fuels.

The sit-in at the liberal arts college in Pennsylvania launches a new wave of protests by campus divestment campaigners across the US that will culminate in an old-style teach-in at Harvard on 13 April.

Some 37 students and six alumni entered the finance and investment office of the university at about 9am on Thursday.

"We are in," said Stephen O'Hanlon, a political science student. He said the students planned to stay until university administrators agree to return to negotiations on a divestment plan. "At this point we have no plans to leave," he said.

Swarthmore, founded by Quakers, helped launch the campus divestment movement, now active at hundreds of universities across North America, Europe and Australia. Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief, graduated in 1979. The UN agency she heads, which is charged with guiding international negotiations towards a global deal on climate change, supports divestment. "It sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," a spokesman said. Nearly two-thirds of Swarthmore's 1,500 students signed a petition last December calling on the university to exit coal, oil and gas holdings. The Swarthmore Mountain Justice campaign is calling for an immediate freeze on new fossil fuel investments, followed by a staged withdrawal over five years. It urges the university to invest 1% of the endowment in renewable energy. Nearly 100 faculty and about 1,000 alumni also support the divestment campaign, making this one of the biggest campaigns in Swarthmore's history, the activists said. "We think the conflict between Swarthmore's Quaker values and the destruction produced by the fossil fuel industry is untenable," said Sara Blazevic, who is graduating this year in comparative literature. "There is a choice before the board to stand on the right side of history and to stand with our generation." Campaigners and university administrators have held more than 30 meetings on divestment over the last four years. But those talks stalled in February after the university hosted a two-day discussion on climate change. The university said its opposition to divestment remains unchanged. "In 2013, following a two-year period of study and analysis the college chose not to divest from fossil fuels within its investment portfolio and this decision has remained unchanged since that time," Gregory Brown, vice-president for finance and administration. The university at the time dismissed divestment as a symbolic gesture, and warned divestment would slice $10m (£6.7m) to $15m off the income generated from Swarthmore's $1.6bn endowment, much of which goes for scholarships. The students reject the argument, citing the recent drop in oil prices and the uncertainties over the long-term of investing in fossil fuels. "The investment committee denies the existence of the carbon bubble and false claims that no active managers can pursue a fossil-free investment strategy effectively. We know this is wrong," said Guido Girgenti, a political science student due to graduate this year. "The carbon bubble poses a serious financial threat to our endowment."

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

UN climate chief joins alumni calling on Swarthmore to divest from fossil fuels;
Christiana Figueres calls on Swarthmore College in a letter to 'play its part in history' and rid its investments of fossil fuels that cause climate change

BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 425 words

The United Nations climate chief appealed to her alma mater, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, to withdraw from fossil fuels, in an important symbolic show of support for the campus divestment campaign.

A group of protesters occupied Swarthmore's administrative office last week to demand the university return to negotiations on fossil fuel divestment. The administrative board have since agreed to put divestment on the agenda their May meeting.

Related: Students occupy Swarthmore college in fossil fuel divestment protest

In a letter to Swarthmore's administration and students, Christiana Figueres, who heads the UN agency guiding the international climate negotiations, called on the university to rid its endowment of fossil fuels.

"History is calling all of us to smoothly usher in the next phase of global economic development," the letter said. "Swarthmore can not determine the pathway of global investments, but it can protect its endowments and play its part in history."

She took direct aim at the argument that divestment was ineffective in fighting climate change.

"The thought that one institution's small investment level is inconsequential is analogous to the dangerous sentiment that in the context of a democratic system one vote is irrelevant because a single person does not affect change," the letter said. "Or, in the context of an academic institution, it is analogous to the unacceptable belief that the education of one student is unimportant because a single person does not affect change."

Figueres graduated from the university in 1979. Her intervention provides an important boost to a campus divestment campaign which is beginning to gather momentum.

This week, 130 faculty members at New York University called on the institution to quit its holdings in the top 200 publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies. The university which has an $3.4bn (£2.3bn) endowment, has an estimated $139m in fossil fuel holdings.

Meanwhile, about 50 student protesters occupied a building at Bowdoin to demand the university withdraw from fossil fuels.

Figueres, in her letter said she shared the campaigners view that there was a "moral imperative" to quit the companies responsible for climate change.

But much of the three-page letter sought to make a financial case for divestment, drawing on her work with industry as the UN climate chief to argue that Swarthmore could better safeguard its endowment by shifting away from fossil fuels and into clean energy.

"It is financially prudent to be on the forefront of this decision," she said.

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

UK's coastal railways vulnerable to climate threat, expert warns;
Track vulnerable to waves, landslides and storms includes sections that carry nuclear waste to Sellafield in Cumbria and from Wylfa in north Wales, says author of a new book on UK coastal railways

BYLINE: Rob Edwards

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 616 words

Hundreds of miles of railway lines around Britain's coast are becoming increasingly vulnerable to waves, landslides and storms triggered by climate pollution, an expert has warned.

Professor Robert Duck from the University of Dundee says that numerous sections of railway in Wales, Cumbria, Devon and elsewhere are at risk of being washed away because they skirt so close to the sea. Three lines had to close in 2014 after being damaged by waves, most memorably at Dawlish on the south coast of Devon where the track was left hanging in mid-air.

Trains on some of the vulnerable coastal tracks carry nuclear waste to the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and from the Wylfa nuclear site in north Wales. They are also vital lifelines for hundreds of communities.

Duck is the author of a new book on UK coastal railways called ' On the Edge ' to be launched on Thursday. It points out that over 93 miles (150km) of the operating railway network in Wales are on the coast, along with many other stretches around England and Scotland.

The seawall protecting the railway at Dawlish was destroyed in February 2014 and the line was out of action for two months. "This was a dramatic example of the problems we face as climate change leads to more storms and exacerbates coastal erosion," says Duck.

"Much of our coast has railway lines at the edge forming the first line of defence from the sea. This leads to spectacular scenery for passengers to enjoy but increasing difficulties for franchise operators and government."

For railway builders in the mid-19th century the coast was cheaper, flatter and easier than using inland sites, he points out. "We wouldn't have built these railway lines where they are if we had today's knowledge."

One of the most vulnerable lines runs along the Cambrian coast in northwest Wales. Winter storms in January 2014 damaged the track in several places between Machynlleth, Barmouth and Pwllheli, and took five months to repair.

Ballast and earth supporting 200 metres of railway line at Flimby, to the north of Workington in Cumbria, were also washed away by high tides and strong winds in January 2014. It is on the coastal line between Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness that carries highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power stations to the Sellafield reprocessing plant.

Another line at risk runs close to the north Wales shore from Chester to Holyhead. It connects with Wylfa on Anglesey where there is an ageing nuclear power station, and contested proposals to build a new one.

Duck, a professor of environmental geoscience at Dundee, warns that hard engineering solutions for protecting coastal railways may become too expensive. "The time will come when we have to look at alternatives, building inland diversions and re-opening long-closed lines as a way of ensuring that we do not cut off communities," he says.

Edinburgh rail consultant, David Spaven, agreed that diversions might work in some places but in others there were major engineering challenges. "It's ironic that climate change, which should generally mean a bright future for energy-efficient rail transport, also threatens the integrity of coastal routes," he said.

Network Rail, which is responsible for maintaining the railways, accepted that coastal lines were vulnerable to extreme weather. "That's why we spend millions each year protecting the railway from nature's worst attacks," said a company spokeswoman.

"We've published a series of route-based weather resilience and climate change plans which explain our understanding of how weather can affect the railway and the potential impact of changes in our climate. We explain what we're doing to mitigate the impacts."

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate denial is immoral, says head of US Episcopal church;
Climate change is a moral challenge threatening the rights of the world's poorest people and those who deny it are not using God's gift of knowledge, says presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in New York

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 852 words

The highest ranking woman in the Anglican communion has said climate denial is a "blind" and immoral position which rejects God's gift of knowledge.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the most powerful women in Christianity, said that climate change was a moral imperative akin to that of the civil rights movement. She said it was already a threat to the livelihoods and survival of people in the developing world.

"It is in that sense much like the civil rights movement in this country where we are attending to the rights of all people and the rights of the earth to continue to be a flourishing place," Bishop Jefferts Schori said in an interview with the Guardian. "It is certainly a moral issue in terms of the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable around the world already."

In the same context, Jefferts Schori attached moral implications to climate denial, suggesting those who reject the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God's gift of knowledge.

It's hard work when you have a climate denier who will not see the reality of scientific truth.

Katharine Jefferts Schori

"Episcopalians understand the life of the mind is a gift of God and to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you," she said. "In that sense, yes, it could be understood as a moral issue."

She went on: "I think it is a very blind position. I think it is a refusal to use the best of human knowledge, which is ultimately a gift of God."

The sense of urgency around the issue has been deepened by Pope Francis forceful statements on global warming, which he is expected to amplify in a papal encyclical in June and during an address to the US Congress in September.

The Episcopalian church will host a webcast on 24 March to kick off a month-long action campaign designed to encourage church members to reduce their own carbon footprints and lobby government and international corporations to fight climate change.

An oceanographer before she was ordained at the age of 40, Bishop Jefferts Schori said she hoped to use her visibility as a church leader to help drive action on climate change.

As presiding bishop, she oversees 2.5m members of the Episcopal church in 17 countries, and is arguably one of the most prominent women in Christianity. The two largest denominations in the US, Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, do not ordain women.

"I really hope to motivate average Episcopalians to see the severity of this issue, the morality of this issue," she said. "Turning the ship in another direction requires the consolidated efforts of many people who are moving in the same direction."

She acknowledged that the challenge was deepened by the strain of climate denial in American politics, and by continued resistance to science in American classrooms.

"It's hard work when you have a climate denier who will not see the reality of scientific truth," she said.

However, she, like a number of church leaders, said they had seen an uptick in climate activism in recent months, spurred by the pope's comments last January, and the conjunction later this year of United Nations conferences on development and climate change.

Evangelical churches - once seen as a conservative force - were now taking up the climate cause, largely because of growing awareness of its threat to the poor.

"One of the significant changes in particular has been the growing awareness and activism among the evangelical community who at least somewhat in the more distant past refused to encounter this issue, refused to deal with it," Jeffers Schori said. "The major evangelical groups in this country have been much more forward in addressing this issue because they understand that it impacts the poor."

A number of denominations have also joined the growing fossil fuel divestment movement which is encouraging organisations to move their investments out of coal, oil and gas companies. The United Methodist church, the third largest denomination, dumped coal companies from its pension fund.

Related: World Council of Churches rules out fossil fuel investments

The Unitarian church and the United church of Christ have also voted to divest, according to Reverent Fletcher Harper of Green Faith. And the World Council of Churches has pledged not to invest in fossil fuels. A number of individual congregations have also divested from fossil fuels.

The Guardian launched a campaign on Monday to encourage the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels.

The Episcopal church has also come under pressure to withdraw its fossil fuel holdings. A number of diocese are pressing for divestment, and will bring the issue to a vote at the church's annual convention this summer.

Jefferts Schori opposes fossil fuel divestment. "If you divest you lose any direct ability to influence the course of a corporation's behavior," she said. "I think most pragmatists realise that we can't close the spigot on the oil wells and close the coal mines immediately without some other energy source to shift to."

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

MPs pension fund should not be divested from fossil fuels, says Liz Truss;
Conservative environment secretary said she favoured carbon reduction targets over divestment at a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election

BYLINE: Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 536 words

The Conservative environment secretary, Liz Truss, has said she would not request the MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels.

She told the Guardian: "I believe the right way [to affect investment] is through carbon reduction targets."

Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow energy secretary, said she would "look into it". She declined to support divestment and said the debate over divestment should be about setting the right conditions for long-term investment in environmental sustainability.

The MPs were speaking to the Guardian on the fringes of a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election, held by the Green Alliance and a consortium of environmental NGOs.

More than 200 institutions worldwide have now either divested from fossil fuels or have committed to do so, including faith organisations, local authorities and universities. The Guardian is currently calling on the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to move away from fossil fuel investments, reasoning that much of the world's fossil fuel reserve will need to be kept in the ground if greenhouse gas emissions targets are to be met and the ravages predicted from climate change are to be avoided.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, told the debate that he supported divestment away from coal, but not gas as it would continue to be needed, and which currently makes up 80% of the UK's energy use. He said this move was already happening.

He said: "The way pension funds are going, they are interested in placing their money in what they see as sustainable forms of investment. To give incentives we need decarbonisation targets. I would make a distinction between coal and oil and gas."

He also called for more transparency for investors. "If you look at the work of the Bank of England, the Bank of Brazil, the Bank of South Africa, you need to ensure investors have real disclosure about the assets of the companies they are investing in, [to see whether they are] building assets or long-term liabilities. Investor disclosure is one thing we can push through."

Caroline Lucas, the Green party's only MP, said she was enthusiastically calling for divestment through the MPs' pension fund and others.

The MPs were also asked about the future of shale gas in the UK, with Lucas firmly opposed while the others said they supported shale gas development with good regulation. Flint said: "We not setting our faces against shale gas - we will need gas for years to come." She said Labour had put forward a variety of measures for environmental protection and regulation on shale drilling in the infrastructure bill. Davey said producing shale gas in the UK was greener than importing gas from Qatar.

Truss said: "We have done a lot of work on the risk. Provided we have the right protections in place, it can have minimal impact on the environment. There is already onshore oil and gas in this country [without the use of fracking technology and] which has the support of local residents. Just like other forms of energy, shale has to go through local planning protections put in place by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). It really is very heavily protected - that is the right approach."

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Guardian Weekly Letters, 27 March 2015;
Fighting climate change; credibility of science; anxious American males

SECTION: GLOBAL

LENGTH: 1587 words

Focus on climate change

Bravo, Guardian, for giving climate change the prominence it deserves (13 March). I hope it will contribute to international action that will take us off the current path that will lead to 4C - maybe even 6C - warming by the end of the century: a scenario that would be catastrophic.

In its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) listed population growth as a driving force of global warming. Many argue, like George Monbiot, it's just a matter of consumption. Yes, we in the richer world do need to consume less, to travel less, to live in smaller homes.

The poor of the world may not contribute significantly to climate change through fossil-fuel emissions; nevertheless, they do need to eat. The deforestation that is associated with growing more food is definitely a major contributor to climate change, as is agriculture itself.

So, Monbiot notwithstanding, in this excellent initiative on climate change, please acknowledge that rapid stabilisation of our numbers could be both a significant mitigation and adaptation tool. Jenny GoldieMichelago, NSW, Australia

· As Alan Rusbridger puts it, the sceptics and deniers are wasting their time. The proven reality of humanly induced climate change has arrived. Yet, still, we are harried by a failure to reduce our uptake, consumption and discard of fossil fuels. Indeed, the catchy 2008 G8 communique "20% decreased carbon by 2020" is mocked by a 20% increase - with 2020 still six years away.

There are three main reasons for this. One, parliaments strive to maintain continuity in office with pork-barrel blandishments. Two, corporations seek profits that eclipse previous ones. Three, the top one-fifth of wealth perpetuate lifestyles perilous to all humankind.

Clearly, we of the upper-fifth cohort could cut by half our consumption and waste without any real hardship: curbing our mobility, fashion accessories, gadgets and appliances, food imports and waste generation.

Unlike the hapless Occupy movement, we have control over the bit of the system we want to improve. Reluctance from governments and resistance from corporations need not impede us - we already are an exemplary movement in the making.

Asceticism is not called for. In fact the reverse: a fulfilled, balanced and happy life, with social exceptions around continued access to modern indispensables. Having fun, sharing, giving back and a gentler lifestyle are the rewards. Maybe big government and big business will get our message? Robert RiddellHelensville, New Zealand

· The Guardian is taking action against "the climate threat to Earth". And environmentalists talk of saving the planet. But Earth will survive us, as it has survived many other changes and catastrophes.

What we are really talking about saving is our lifestyle - particularly our affluent, developed-nations lifestyle - since the majority of humans live in poverty, which has a low impact on the planet.

Even a brief survey of the Guardian Weekly provides abundant evidence that we, as a species, are too stupid to save ourselves. Tim SprodTaroona, Tasmania, Australia

The credibility of science

Why science is so hard to believe (6 March) resonates here in Quebec where dozens of cases of measles, all originating in one visit to California's Disneyland, continue to increase among the unvaccinated. The provincial government has made a creditable but unsuccessful effort to persuade the 16% who decline and, as your article points out, are in like-thinking clusters. Of this group 14% give religious reasons, over 20% fear autism in their children and some say they will not give "poison" to their children, even for a greater good.

Would these parents refuse pre-surgical anaesthesia, which can also be described as "poison"?

Should the media, which feast on disagreement, step away from "fairness", from giving credence to the scientifically discredited? Unlike the counter-intuitive examples you cite, if measles disappears after 95% vaccination and the only negative result is a sore arm, why should those who oppose it have a platform at all? Elizabeth QuanceWestmount, Quebec, Canada

· Joel Achenbach seems a bit confused: he supports the fluoridation of water because it is a natural mineral, but so is arsenic. A naturally occurring element is not necessarily safe for human consumption.

On the wider point of the nature of science, he argues that science is true, in particular that evolution is true; but science is much more complex and limited than that: a scientific theory is a model of the world, describing things that occur naturally in a way that enable predictions to be made, particularly by using mathematics.

A theory is true only in the sense that its predictions are correct and that it is useful, but even the best theories may one day be replaced by models which provide different and more useful views of the world.

So he is right to argue that scientists need to avoid drawing final conclusions from their work and reporters need to recognise that scientists cannot say things with absolute certainty. William AckroydEsplas de Sérou, France

Psychology of terror

I admire the sincere ethical sensitivity of Jonathan Freedland's essays on Israel's predicament, but fear the misdirection of this latest one at a time of rising Islamophobic hysteria (6 March). The psychological reject narrative or political apology of organisations like Cage should not be so easily dismissed: current security and punitive policies do seem to be motivating more rather than fewer jihad extremists, the west's colonial and postcolonial history in the Middle East is shameful and not forgotten by its peoples, and reactionary state terrorism and populist terrorism are increasingly real threats prompted by nations leading (or exploiting) the so-called war on terror.

Freedland's alternative, although apparently sympathetic, is more reductively psychologistic than the reject narrative: charismatic inspiration of youths searching for moral absolutes. This explanation may only reinforce the bigoted and provocative targeting of "subversive" imams and "immature" cultures. His concluding recommendation juxtaposing "stronger and more confident" western nations with violent jihadism "terrified by modernity, terrified of the past, terrified of women and terrified of difference" also echoes too closely the binary absolutism of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations and even Bernard Lewis's The Muslim Discovery of Europe. These old rationales were part of, rather than solutions to, a historical and political economic problem that is now getting worse. Steven WebsterAuckland, New Zealand

American anxieties

In reporting a study by British scientists on average penis size (13 March), you clearly sought to reassure the average adult male that he need not feel "small penis anxiety". Your intention, I fear, will have backfired in the United States.

When you decided to give those critical measurements in centimetres, you forgot that Americans haven't the faintest understanding of the metric system. President Jimmy Carter tried to get us to learn it, but you know what the attitude towards any sort of higher education of his successor was, and the effort was dropped. Americans, therefore, mentally convert everything metric into the "English" system you have largely abandoned.

Already floundering in our sea of media-driven sexual anxieties, we read with panic the scientists' numbers - "13.12... in length when erect, 11.66... around" - as inches. Meanwhile, our tiny percent who rise above the top end of the scale must face the disappointment of believing that what they'd thought exceptional is only "average".

You will be responsible for the resulting stampede of average and above-average American males to the offices of our urologists and sex therapists - which you may well be reporting in your next issue. John RidlandSanta Barbara, California, US

Briefly

· Surely something important is missing from your article, EU needs army to defend its values, insists Juncker (13 March). We read that the British government insists "the idea is unacceptable", that "there is no prospect of a European army", that "it isn't right for the European Union to have capabilities, air forces and all the rest"... but why? How about giving us a plausible explanation for this authoritative and outright rejection? Alexandra TavernierMarcq-en-Baroeul, France

· Will Self's review of Charles: The Heart of a King (6 March) shows the novelist letting us know how clever he is with words and not learning anything from the biography. It would have been better reviewed by someone cutting the subject down to a size he thinks he isn't. Edward BlackSydney, Australia

· The sports item More shame for Armstrong (13 March) reports on the latest shenanigans in the sorry saga of Lance Armstrong's attempts to return to cycling competition, and uses an analogy purporting to show that the affair is like "a malingering head cold ... that refuses to go away".

The lingering question is: was Lance Armstrong justified in using the "doping" as a justifiable treatment for (what sounds like) a particularly devious and pernicious disease, albeit one that is difficult to get one's brain around? Anthony WalterSurrey, British Columbia, Canada

Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com including a full postal address and a reference to the article. Submissions may be edited for publication

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Scotland advised to take strong action after missing emissions target again;
Committee on climate change advises Edinburgh to rethink cuts on air duty and introduce measures to reduce road traffic

BYLINE: Severin Carrell Scotland correspondent

SECTION: UK NEWS

LENGTH: 735 words

Scottish politicians should consider congestion charges, reducing speed limits and rethink plans to cut air passenger duty after Scotland again missed its climate targets, an influential advisory committee has said.

The committee on climate change, the Scottish government's official advisers, said far-reaching action was needed to reduce CO2 emissions after the reduction targets were missed for the third time by some 4.5%.

While the figures for 2012 showed Scotland's emissions were better overall than the UK's and it has been faster on installing renewables, the CCC said it needed to do far more on cutting transport emissions - which are not falling - tackling home fuel use, and that it would require deeper cuts from the wider public sector.

Environmentalists have predicted the Scottish government would also miss the 2013 target by a very wide margin, after failing repeatedly to implement tougher measures to cut transport, home energy and public sector emissions - the sectors over which it has direct control.

Related: Scotland misses carbon targets for third year in a row

The committee said Scottish ministers should weigh up the impact of their plans to cut air passenger duty when Holyrood gets control over the duty - because it could increase aviation emissions - and use other new powers to cut speed limits on roads.

The CCC said: "Meeting future targets remains very challenging, and will require further action in a number of sectors including low-carbon heat, energy efficiency, transport and agriculture and land use. Even in areas of good progress, challenges remain to achieve the stretching targets set out by the Scottish government."

The Scottish government was pushed by opposition parties in 2008 into accepting an ambitious emissions reduction goal of 42% by 2020, and has since boasted it has "world-beating" targets, relying heavily on its successful expansion of onshore wind farms.

The CCC said those renewable energy policies were having a positive effect: with green electricity accounting for 44% of Scottish consumption in 2013, and a 40% growth in community owned energy projects, Scotland would likely meet its 2020 green energy target early.

However, only about 30% of Scotland's emissions are linked directly to policy areas directly in the control of the Edinburgh government. It relies heavily on action by the UK and EU to cut most of its emissions, including improvements in vehicle efficiency, home appliances and lighting.

Scotland's target for 2013 involves the most ambitious annual cut of the entire programme of 10% from its target in 2012 of 53.22mte (million tonnes equivalent) to 47.98mte. It actually allowed 55.6mte to be emitted in 2012, widening the gap between the target and expected emissions for the following year.

Tom Ballantine, the chairman of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said this was the fourth time the CCC had urgedministers to take tougher action. "This is a crucial year for the fight against global warming, as world leaders meet in Paris in December to thrash out a new global agreement on climate change," he said.

"Scotland is rightly proud of its world-leading legislation on climate change but, as the CCC highlights today, the Scottish government must deliver what is set out in our Climate Change Act, so that we can retain our credibility in this area and show other countries what the benefits are of a low carbon nation."

The report was drafted before Scottish Power announced on Monday that it was planning to close down Longannet coal-fired power station, Scotland's largest single polluter and one of Europe's dirtiest power plants.

Related: Longannet power station to shut next year

Longannet emitted 9.5mmte of CO2 in 2013, 17% of the 55.6mte of CO2 that Scotland emitted the previous year. But WWF Scotland said that under the EU's current emissions trading regime, where the energy sectors CO2 output is pooled across the EU, its closure would have no impact on Scotland's emissions because another country could open a power station in its place.

That would change in 2020, when the emissions accounting regime would include each country's power stations onto its domestic totals, said Gina Hanrahan, WWF Scotland's climate and energy policy officer.

"Longannet's closure is really good news overall in terms of Scotland's real emissions, but the way its emissions are counted, it is not credited to Scotland yet," she said.

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Science Museums Urged to Cut Ties With Kochs

BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ

SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 846 words

Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to ''cut all ties'' with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers.

A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors' efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.

''When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge,'' the letter states. ''This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost.''

The letter does not mention specific companies, but it does name David H. Koch, who sits on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has given tens of millions of dollars to those institutions.

Koch Industries is a privately held corporation with subsidiaries in energy and other industries. Mr. Koch and his family have funded conservative causes, including scientists and organizations that contest the role of humans in climate change.

Public records show that many fossil-fuel companies have made similar contributions to such organizations and scientists over the years.

The letter is a project of the Natural History Museum, a mobile museum that draws attention to ''social and political forces that shape nature yet are left out of traditional natural history museums,'' said its co-founder and director, Beka Economopoulos.

A petition drive, also released on Tuesday and sponsored by environmental organizations including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, urges the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History to ''Kick Koch off the board!''

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and signer of the letter, said the donors seek a halo they do not deserve. ''Cloaked in the garb of civic-mindedness, they launder their image while simultaneously and covertly influencing the content offered by those institutions,'' he said.

Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said he could not comment on the letter because he had not seen it.

Allegations that contributions from donors like Mr. Koch influence institutions exhibits are not new. A 2010 investigation in The New Yorker noted that an underlying message of exhibits in the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is that humans ''evolved in response to a changing world.'' The article said that such language suggests that climate change has been a feature of the planet since prehistoric times, which plays down human contributions to climate change.

Randall Kremer, director of public affairs for the museum, said that Mr. Koch served on the advisory board, which is ''a consultative board not a governing board,'' and that ''the museum director has no plans to ask any members to step down.''

Mr. Kremer added that while Mr. Koch was the largest single donor to the museum, ''he signed our standard gift agreement, which prohibits donor or sponsor involvement in content.''

A spokesman for the American Museum of Natural History, Roberto Lebron, said, ''Donors do not determine the interpretation or presentation of scientific content.''

Eric Chivian, founder of the center for health and the global environment at Harvard Medical School and a signer of the letter, said he was not convinced that policies barring donors from having direct control over exhibits are effective. ''It is just human nature not to bite the hand that feeds you,'' he said.

Mr. Koch, who has given $100 million to Lincoln Center to renovate the former New York State Theater and supports many other institutions, has said that his contributions to the museums come from a deep love of science, and from being ''blown away and just fascinated'' by the dinosaurs on his first visit to the American Museum of Natural History when he was 14. Mr. Koch and his company did not respond directly to a request for comment about the letter.

Dr. Chivian, who as co-founder of the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War shared the organization's 1985 Nobel Prize, said natural history museum contributions from the Koch brothers were fundamentally different from their contributions to arts institutions.

''The Koch brothers have no stake in what is played at Lincoln Center,'' Dr. Chivian said. But such funding for museums is no more acceptable than it would be if ''a major tobacco company offered to fund an exhibit for them devoted to lung diseases.''

Chris Norris, a paleontologist and prominent blogger on museum issues, warned that if museums started removing board members or turning down donations, they risked damaging their reputations for objectivity. Doing so, he added, would enable ''others to argue that the information they provide is partisan and not to be trusted.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/science-museums-urged-to-cut-ties-with-kochs.html

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

The Real Cost of Coal

BYLINE: By DAVID J. HAYES and JAMES H. STOCK.

David J. Hayes, a former deputy interior secretary, teaches at Stanford. James H. Stock, a former member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, is a professor at Harvard.

SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; Pg. 23

LENGTH: 639 words

CONGRESS long ago established a basic principle governing the extraction of coal from public lands by private companies: American taxpayers should be paid fair value for it. They own the coal, after all.

Lawmakers set a royalty payment of 12.5 percent of the sale price of the coal in 1976. Forty years later, those payments remain stuck there, with actual collections often much less. Studies by the Government Accountability Office, the Interior Department's inspector general and nonprofit research groups have all concluded that taxpayers are being shortchanged.

This is no small matter. In 2013, approximately 4o percent of all domestic coal came from federal lands. A recent study by the independent nonprofit research group Headwaters Economics estimates that various reforms to the royalty valuation system would have generated $900 million to $5.6 billion more overall between 2008 and 2012.

This failure by the government to collect fair value for taxpayer coal is made more troubling by the climate-change implications of burning this fossil fuel. Taxpayers are already incurring major costs in responding to the effects of global warming. Coastal infrastructure is being battered by sea rise and storm surges; forests are being devastated by climate-aided pest infestations; and studies are suggesting that temperature rises have increased the likelihood of devastating droughts in California.

Moreover, as the Council of Economic Advisers documented in a report last July because of the long-lived nature of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these costs will continue to rise.

The Interior Department, which manages energy resources on federal lands, has acknowledged that reforms are needed. In January, the department took a first step by proposing more scrutiny on the self-reported sales that coal companies use as the basis for royalty payments. It also must address other well-documented problems, including large discounts routinely applied to these payments, and noncompetitive lease sales.

But the department should not stop there. The federal government should also take into account the economic consequences of burning coal when pricing this fuel. The price for taxpayer-owned coal should reflect, in some measure, the added costs associated with the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.

This is not a novel concept. Some utilities and other businesses already are applying a so-called carbon adder to account for the environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions. These adders are used for planning purposes to compare the costs of fossil fuel and renewable electricity generation and have not been charged to consumers.

But the Interior Department should take a cue from the private sector and go a step further by imposing a carbon adder on coal sales. Money collected from the adder could be phased in to avoid sharp price disruptions and used to help defray the growing, uncompensated costs that the government is incurring in responding to climate change.

Computing the appropriate carbon adder will not be easy, but that should not deter the Interior Department from accounting for a meaningful portion of coal's climate impact when updating the federal coal royalty rate.

Industry is sure to oppose this, even though coal is the planet's most carbon-intensive energy source. Others will argue that an across-the-board carbon tax is a more efficient way to account for climate impacts. With no near-term prospects for such legislation, however, the Interior Department should set a royalty that provides fair value to taxpayers by addressing the climate costs of burning coal.

The greenhouse gas burden from coal taken from government lands can no longer be ignored. Using a carbon adder to increase the royalties that taxpayers receive is a sensible step in the right direction.

URL:

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

A Climate Change Safety Net Frays

BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS

SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 445 words

The ability of the Amazon forest to soak up excess carbon dioxide is weakening over time, researchers reported last week. That finding suggests that limiting climate change could be more difficult than expected.

For decades, Earth's forests and seas have been soaking up roughly half of the carbon pollution that people are pumping into the atmosphere. That has limited the planetary warming that would otherwise result from those emissions.

The forests and oceans have largely kept up even as emissions have skyrocketed. That surprised many scientists, but also prompted warnings that such a robust ''carbon sink'' could not be counted on to last forever.

In a vast study spanning 30 years and covering 189,000 trees distributed across 321 plots in the Amazon basin, researchers led by a group at the University of Leeds, in Britain, reported that the uptake of carbon dioxide in the Amazon peaked in the 1990s, at about 2 billion tons a year, and has since fallen by half.

Initially, the researchers postulated, the Amazon may have responded well to rising carbon dioxide levels, which are known to increase plant growth, but that response appears to be tapering off. Drought and other stresses could be playing a role, but the main factor seems to be that the initial acceleration of growth sped up the metabolism of the trees.

''With time, the growth stimulation feeds through the system, causing trees to live faster, and so die younger,'' Oliver L. Phillips, a tropical ecologist at the University of Leeds and one of the leaders of the research, said in a statement.

Further research is needed, but the scientists say that climate forecasting models that assume a continuing, robust carbon sink in the Amazon could be overly optimistic.

At a global scale, studies suggest that forests are still absorbing far more carbon than they release into the atmosphere, even as stresses like fires and beetle attacks increase because of climate change. In essence, rising forces of growth have been outracing rising forces of death in the world's forests.

Perhaps the big question now is whether that will flip. Will forests beyond the Amazon, such as the boreal forest that encircles the Northern Hemisphere, eventually follow the Amazon and weaken as carbon sinks?

That would mean, in effect, that human civilization would have less help from trees, and cuts in carbon emissions would need to be sharper than previously thought to limit global warming to tolerable levels.

''Forests are doing us a huge favor, but we can't rely on them to solve the carbon problem,'' Dr. Phillips said. ''Instead, deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilize our climate.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/earth/amazon-forest-becoming-less-of-a-climate-change-safety-net.html

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A section of the Amazon forest that was illegally slashed and burned next to a section of virgin forest in Brazil. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LALO DE ALMEIDA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Florida's unspeakable issue leaves climate change official tongue-tied;
Emergency chief says anything but phrase 'banned' by governorFema to pull funding for states that refuse to address climate change

BYLINE: Katherine Krueger

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 448 words

The latest victim of Florida governor Rick Scott's unwritten ban on state officials using the words "climate change" is his own disaster preparedness lieutenant, who stumbled through verbal gymnastics to avoid using the scientific term in a newly surfaced video.

Bryan Koon, Florida's emergency management chief, was testifying before the state senate's budget subcommittee on Thursday, answering questions about the news that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) will pull federal funding from states that refuse to directly address climate change.

In the video, uploaded by the advocacy group Forecast The Facts, Senator Jeff Clemens asks Koon whether he is aware of the updated Fema guidelines, which would block 2016 funding in states whose governors refuse to implement so-called hazard mitigation plans for global warming.

Koon affirmed that the state's next plan would be required to include "language to that effect".

Clemens came back, saying: "I used 'climate change', but I'm suggesting, maybe as a state we use 'atmospheric re-employment', that might be something the governor can get behind" - to laughter among committee members and the audience.

But Koon charged on, clarifying that "future versions of our mitigation plan will be required to have language discussing that issue".

"What issue is that"? Clemens asked with a smile.

"The issue that you mentioned earlier, regarding ..." Koon said, before being drowned out by laughter at his obvious discomfort.

Scott and his staff have repeatedlydeniedthat they have instituted a ban on allowing local officials to say "climate change", "global warming" or "sustainability" in public, but the governor has not shied away from publicly expressing scepticism about the science of climate change on the campaign trail.

Related: Florida employee 'punished for using phrase climate change'

Koon's public gaffe comes after recent reports that a longtime state environmental protection employee was issued an official reprimand instructing him to take two days of leave and not return to work before a mental health evaluation ruled him fit for duty after he included the words "climate change" in meeting notes.

Florida is far from the only state that has refused to make action on climate change a priority. Tennessee, Louisiana and North Carolina all have laws on the books that open the door for climate change denial to be taught in the classroom.

A recent study from Columbia University's Center for Climate Change Law also found 18 states have disaster mitigation plans that either include no provisions for responding to the effects of climate change, or reference it in a dismissive or inaccurate way.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Carbon capture battle stirs hopes, dreams and grim realities;
In Norway capturing and burying carbon emissions has brought down one prime minister, been likened to a national 'moon landing' by another and left the country's highest-emitting gas plant as a monument

BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brevik

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 2286 words

At least 10 European power plants were supposed to begin piping their carbon emissions into underground tombs this year, rather than letting them twirl into the sky. None has done so.

Missed deadlines, squandered opportunities, spiralling costs and green protests have plagued the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology since Statoil proposed the concept more than two decades ago.

But in the face of desperate global warming projections the CCS dream still unites Canadian tar sands rollers with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Shell with some environmentalists.

"If you take climate change seriously, it is extremely dangerous not to enable this technology for use in refineries, steel, cement, gas and coal plants," said Frederic Hauge, the founder of the Bellona Foundation, a key mover in Norway's CCS project. "When combined with biomass, CCS gives us the option of going carbon negative (reducing more emissions than are created) which we need because we don't have a Plan B - or Planet B."

With 2bn people in the developing world expected to hook up to the world's dirty energy system by 2050, CCS holds out the tantalising prospect of fossil-led growth that does not fry the planet.

Shell, a major funder of Bellona, has championed it as a way of continuing to extract the oil and gas reserves that it says will likely make up most of the planet's energy mix by mid-century.

"With CCS in the mix, we can decarbonise in a cost-effective manner and still continue to produce, to some extent, our fossil fuels," Tim Bertels, Shell's Glocal CCS portfolio manager told the Guardian. "You don't need to divest in fossil fuels, you need to decarbonise them."

The technology has been gifted "a very significant fraction" of the billions of dollars earmarked by Shell for clean energy research, he added. But the firm is also a vocal supporter of public funding for CCS from carbon markets, as are almost all players in the industry.

"If you want to contribute to continued development and bring people out of poverty you need to see ever-increasing energy consumption in the world. Fossil fuels will play a large part in that, so CCS has to play a role too," said Norway's energy minister Tord Lien. "It is going to be a lot easier to see that happen through a real price on CO2 emissions."

Many environmentalists see the idea as a non-starter because it locks high emitting power plants into future energy systems, and obstructs funding for the cheaper renewables revolution already underway. "CCS is is completely irrelevant," said Jeremy Rifkin, a noted author and climate adviser to several governments. "I don't even think about it. It's not going to happen. It's not commercially available and it won't be commercially viable."

But the International Energy Agency views the technology as the most cost-effective way of delivering around a fifth of the CO2 reductions needed to cap global warming at 2C, so long as 3,000 carbon-grabbing plants are up and running by 2050.

The US, Canadian and Australian governments have chased the CCS dream with zeal, often using its compressed CO2 byproduct to prise away tar sands and eek out the dregs of depleted fossil fuel reserves.

But only in Norway has CCS brought down one prime minister, been championed by another as a national "moon landing," and left the country's highest-emitting power plant as a monument.

Norway depends on hydropower for almost all its energy, but is the world's third-largest exporter of oil and natural gas. A dissonance between the country's environmental self-image and its higher per-person emissions rankings than the UK or even Poland triggered the country's CCS turn in the 1990s. Even today, while the city of Oslo has divested itself of coal holdings, Norway's sovereign wealth fund has increased its stake in oil and gas firms to £20bn.

The carbon capture idea also sated growing national concerns about over-reliance on hydro as energy shortfalls were projected. And it squared the climate circle.

"The concept of CCS was equated with climate-friendliness in the late '90s and those in favour of it became, by default, climate-friendly politicians," said Truls Gulowsen, Greenpeace Norway's director.

In Sleipner and Snohvit, Statoil built two gas plants which funnelled high content CO2 into a sub-sea ravine. This enhanced export prospects to Germany, which has more exacting carbon content rules, and helped avoid Norway's punitive carbon taxes. Today, the plants remain Europe's only operational CCS projects.

But building other CCS installations onshore proved complicated and costly. In March 2000, the Christian Democrat prime minister Kjell Bondevik resigned after his coalition partners tried to forcethe construction of five gas power plants without CCS.

Six years later, Statoil was given permission to erect the country's largest gas-fired power plant in Mongstad - with CCS fitted. The then-prime minister and current Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg compared it to a national "moon landing" that would put Norway's name on the global clean energy map.

Over £1bn of public subsidies was lavished on the project - a "political subsidy for fossil fuels," according to Rasmus Hansson, the parliamentary leader of Norway's Green party.

"In reality it was a deliberate political move, designed to relieve the Norwegian oil and gas industry of climate-related criticism and it worked," he told the Guardian. "Statoil's plan to build a gas fired power plant had been extremely controversial and parliament only allowed it because of the promise that it would be fitted with CCS."

Statoil was never enthusiastic about the project and after technology costs quintupled in a matter of years, sources say that they demanded exorbitant prices from the government for use of steam that their installations were freely venting.

The result, according to Hansson was the construction of a white elephant gas plant that emits 1.2m tonnes of CO2 pollution annually. In recent years, "Norway is the only country in western Europe that has actually increased its emissions," Rasmusson said. "This did not happen by accident."

In Brevik, two hours from Oslo, the CCS dice are being rolled again with an (EURO)11.7m (£8.5) CCS test being run by Aker solutions at the Norcem cement plant, Norway's most polluting factory, which is responsible for 800,000 tonnes of CO2 output annually.

The factory was also the scene of one of Norway's worst pollution accidents in 2001 when at least 750 tonnes oftoxic sludge spilled into a local harbour and fjord waters. Local environmentalists are concerned about the potential for any repeat.

"A minor CO2 capture seems to be just one partial reason for the new development," said Øystein Dalland, an environmental professor who lives close to the plant. "This is also about achieving an increased bottom line by the synergy of handling fly ash in the cement production process. But even the idea of CO2 capture and waste handling must be subordinate to basic human rights."

The cement industry is responsible for around 5% of global carbon emissions - more than aviation. As with steel or aluminium, it is unlikely to be dislodged from industrial processes any time soon, so some form of carbon mitigation is essential.

One argument against this being CCS is that the technology requires roughly 40% more energy to capture about 85% of the CO2 a plant produces. When costs and emissions from plant and transport infrastructure, builds, emissions and leakages are factored in, that can easily make it a budget-breaker in financial and carbon terms.

But in Brevik, unlike Mongstad, "we can utilise waste heat from cement factory so we don't have to add additional heat," said Oscar Graff, the chief technology officer for AkerSolutionsClean Carbon. "We get it almost for free."

Testing at the plant has focused on four technologies - amine, membrane, solid and calcium cycle. So far, amine technology is "the only one which is applicable at the moment," according to Per Brevik, the CO2 project manager at the plant. A post-combustion technique pumps amine gas into an absorber tower pre-heated to 120 degrees C so that it scrubs carbon dioxide from the flue gas as it descends. The flue gas is then 'washed' again before being vented.

If all goes to plan, up to 400,000 tonnes of trapped CO2 will be trapped this way. Another 50,000 tonnes would be blended with sulphuric acid and fly ash in a solid waste capable of being stored under the southern fjord.

Norcem's testing is focused on catching carbon, not keeping it. But local people fear that adding a CO2 tag to solid waste could give 'green' cover for its burial in a local limestone mine which suffered a collapse in 1976.

"The local authorities have just refused Norcem use of that local harbour and mine site for the disposal of dangerous waste, because it is situated less than 1,000m away from a population of 2,500 people," Dalland said.

According to Lien, "the only likely places to store CO2 in Norway would be on the continental shelf where reservoirs have already been identified that have the quality needed."

But asked about future storage plans for the CO2, a Norcem source told the Guardian that "in future it could be stored in an underground mine like in Brevik. We have a huge underground area in Brevik, but it could also be stored onshore - outside of water [on an island] - or in a hole in the ground." The source said that the CO2 would be stable, well-controlled, and continuously monitored, but that the onus for doing so would not fall on Norcem.

"We can't take responsibility for transport and storage," said Brevik. "It is not our core business. Storage is definitely a national task because you have to guarantee that it won't leak and I don't think that Norcem would like to have that responsibility."

Because of the timescales and potential consequences involved, public liability for CCS leakages raises the same issues as nuclear waste disposal, in Rifkin's view. "There's no way to ensure that there will not one day be a release of CO2 from a deep geological deposit," he said. "Those plates are moving all the time."

A nearly two-mile fracture has already been found close to the Sleipner sub-sea ravine.

Shell argues that its own storage reservoirs are unlikely to ever leak more than 1% of the carbon they house. "Even when there was an earthquake in japan during an injection test, the chance of any CO2 leaking [having taken place] was minimal," Bertels said.

Greenpeace counters that even a one percent leakage rate could invalidate the raison d'etre for CCS, and that carbon escapes can have disastrous consequences in the short term. Some 1,700 people died in 1986, when a Cameroonian volcano erupted, releasing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 that had accumulated at the bottom of Lake Nyos, over a 16-mile range.

"CCS is basically about catching a problem and stuffing it away under the carpet," Rasmusson said. "W e will then live with the statistical risk of some gigantic underground burp. The problem is the same as with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Things that absolutely cannot happen have a tendency of finally happening."

The storage issue opens a pandora's box for environmentalists. Many argue that it will reduce CO2 emissions by too little, and too late. Gulowsen describes CCS as a "painful" issue that "absolutely divided the environmental movement" in Norway.

Hauge a flambuoyant celebrity in Norway who has been arrested more than 30 times for daring environmental actions compares the green schism to university rows among Marxist-Leninists in the 1980s.

"There is no black and white in the environmental discussion anymore," he said. To fight climate change, "we need to go with whatever we can and I can't manage to do that without CCS, even if it means that our former enemies start to become our best allies."

Rifkin poses an alternative vision in which energy, transport and communications technologies are symbiotically - and digitally - merging in a third industrial revolution that will render today's energy firms obsolete. In this analysis, CCS is their last hurrah. "Why would we want to pin our hopes on a matured technology that is costly and nailing us to climate change, when on one sunday in Germany last May, we had so much solar and wind coming through that we had negative prices all day?" he asked. Renewables accounted for 75% of all electricity produced in Germany that day - at operating costs near to zero.

But while storage technologies such as hydrogen batteries, fly wheel storage and smart grids with two-way power-charging may eliminate the need for baseline fossil fuel capacity at some point this century, their current roll-out is happening too slowly, critics argue.

Renewables and energy efficiency "can't do the job for many industrial sectors because these are process emissions that you can't replace with green electricity," said Chris Littlecott, a CCS research associate with E3G. "Over the next 30-50 years, we may have breakthrough technologies that close the loop by recycling steel or using very different cement types but for now, we have to deal with the technologies we have."

In many ways, the debate over carbon capture and storage is a struggle between two competing visions of the societal transformation needed to avert climate disaster. One vision represents the enlightened self-interest of a contributor to the problem. The other cannot succeed without eliminating its highly entrenched opponent. The battle is keenly fought by technological optimists on both sides. But if Norway's fractious CCS experience is any indicator, it will be decided on the ground by the grimmest of realities.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

How dealing with climate change is like playing cricket;
As India gears up against Australia for Thursday's Cricket World Cup semi-final, here's why climate change activists should play close attention to the game

BYLINE: Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, Anna Brown

SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK

LENGTH: 864 words

Related: Palestine field post: 'I am not your normal human rights campaigner'

Hundreds of millions of cricket fans around the world are up all hours these days to cheer for their teams in the Cricket World Cup. As cricket fans well know, one of the toughest deliveries to face in cricket is a "googly", where the ball's movement is discontinuous and difficult to predict, posing a challenge for even the most experienced batsmen.

One-track minds that we are, this reminds us of the challenge we face with climate change - knowing that an unpredictable future is imminent, and feeling uncertain as to how to prepare for it.

One of the trademarks of great batsmen, such as India's Sachin Tendulkar, has been their resilience, even when facing diverse and unpredictable bowling outcomes. Turns out, the ways in which these athletes handle a "googly" match up quite well with the characteristics cities need to be better equipped to cope with climate change.

Here's how...

Reading the conditions

A great batsman is one with a gift for reading both bowler and ball, even before the release. He knows the bowler's strengths, weaknesses and preferences. He can even detect slight variations in the way the bowler is gripping the seam or angling his wrist. It's a kind of informed clairvoyance. Similarly, cities need to focus not only on understanding what climate projections suggest for the city, but also on understanding the current vulnerabilities of people, infrastructure and systems that keep the city running, and project how these may change over time.

This requires methods of sensing and information-gathering, robust feedback loops, such as community meetings or monitoring systems that collect and layer together data to give a more accurate and dynamic picture of the city's strengths, assets, liabilities and vulnerabilities.

Related: Corporations have rights. Now we need a global treaty on their responsibilities

Innovation

There's a stroke in cricket - the Reverse Sweep - that while not a purist's dream, can sometimes be wickedly effective. Addressing climate change sometimes requires a toolkit of similarly unconventional approaches. Cities need innovations of all kinds: especially redundant systems, alternatives, back-ups and reserves that can be used if needed during a disruption. For instance, having multiple pathways to access water (city supply, water tankers, wells and tanks, grey-water reuse, etc) and back-up energy sources for cooking and boiling water can be extremely valuable to save lives and prevent disease during typhoon recovery. Having a diverse set of capacities that can be mobilised when needed is also important.

Ability to keep calm and carry on

Great batsmen are able to keep their wits about them, even when the game appears to be going catastrophically. In urban resilience terms, this means being able self-regulate and manage when calamity does strike. This requires shifting the mindset from trying to make the city "fail-safe", to one of safe-failure. Safe failure may mean building self-regulating systems that can isolate a malfunction and prevent cascading disruptions and eventual collapse, while avoiding over-reliance on a single piece of protective infrastructure, such as a levee.

A common gameplan

Cricket is a team sport, and even the most talented batsmen will only succeed if they calibrate their approach to the needs of the day, and the diverse qualities of the rest of the team. Similarly, cities comprise diverse actors with different functions and strengths. Given the complexity of - and connections between - systems that keep a city functioning, effective solutions to climate challenges will require integrated and coordinated action.

Ability to adapt and be flexible

A winning cricketer knows how to handle whatever comes, whether it's playing in blistering conditions of heat and humidity or the cold and grey gloom of the early English summer. The resilient city is just as adaptive and able to adjust to a disruption by making new plans, taking new actions, or modifying behaviours and mandates to better accommodate the situation.

Inclusive and team-minded

Related: I am a man fighting for women's rights in the Middle East: any questions?

A team is only as strong as its weakest link. So it goes, too, with the resilience of a city. Even if portions of the city are able to withstand floods and storms, these pockets of robustness - whether they are specific wards or populations or sectors - will be crippled if the city as a whole, including marginalised and poor groups, are not able to bounce back from shocks and stresses.

We realise that linking climate change to cricket is a bit of a stretch. But we can't deny - for us, at least, the game provides some unlikely insights into our urgent need to weather the range of climate impacts that are heading our way.

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio and Anna Brown are senior associate directors at the Rockefeller Foundation, specialising in climate change and resilience.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate-sceptic US senator given funds by BP political action committee;
Senator Jim Inhofe, who opposes climate change regulation, has received $10,000 from PAC funded by donations from US staff at oil group

BYLINE: Simon Bowers

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1285 words

One of America's most powerful and outspoken opponents of climate change regulation received election campaign contributions that can be traced back to senior BP staff, including chief executive Bob Dudley.

Jim Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who has tirelessly campaigned against calls for a carbon tax and challenges the overwhelming consensus on climate change, received $10,000 (£6,700) from BP's Political Action Committee (PAC).

Following his re-election, Inhofe became chair of the Senate's environment and public works committee in January, and then a month later featured in news bulletins throwing a snowball across the Senate floor.

Before tossing it, the senator said: "In case we have forgotten - because we keep hearing that 2014 is the warmest year on record - it is very, very cold outside. Very unseasonal."

The BP PAC is funded by contributions from senior US executives and company staffers who sent in contributions to the PAC totalling more than $1m between 2010 and 2014. Over the same period the committee paid out $655,000 to candidates, with more than 40 incumbent senators benefiting.

Yet, BP and Dudley have long called for world leaders to intervene and impose tough regulatory measures on the fossil fuel industry. Publishing its 98-page research paper, Energy Outlook 2035, last month, BP warned : "To abate carbon emissions further will require additional significant steps by policymakers beyond the steps already assumed."

Dudley has personally given $19,000 since June 2011 to the BP PAC - very close to the $5,000-a-year maximum allowable by law. Although Dudley is resident in Britain, he is eligible to give via the BP PAC because he is a US national.

While the sums channelled to Inhofe's campaign represent only a small proportion of the BP PAC's election spending and the senator's own campaign funds, they show how unafraid the committee has been to spread its donations to the most controversial candidates. According to the BP PAC website, it financially supports election candidates "whose views and/or voting records reflect the interests of BP employees".

Records suggest Inhofe's 2014 campaign was a funding priority for the BP PAC, ranking as one of the top recipients of committee funds when compared with disbursements to other serving senators.

This was despite Inhofe's senate battle not being a close one. His opponent, Matt Silverstein, who Inhofe beat comfortably in last November's midterms, had a tiny campaign war chest by comparison.

BP was asked whether it was appropriate for the PAC to make campaign contributions to such a vocal opponent of action on climate change, or for Dudley to be contributing towards such payments.

In a statement BP replied: "Voluntary donations [by staff] to the BP employees' political action committee in the US are used to support a variety of candidates across the political spectrum and in many US geographies where we operate.

"These candidates have one thing in common: they are important advocates for the energy industry in the broadest sense."

It added: "BP's position on climate change is well known and is long-established. We believe that climate change is an important long-term issue that justifies global action."

The company declined to comment on Dudley's own donations.

PACs exist in the US where companies and trade unions cannot give directly to the campaigns of those running for office. Instead funds are pooled from staff - often senior executives - into a PAC, and disbursed by a committee board, often in a manner sympathetic to the company's lobby and other interests.

Other US oil industry leaders, including Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, make contributions to their own corporate PACs - money which in many cases can then be traced to Inhofe and other climate-sceptic politicians.

But Tillerson and other peers have not been as outspoken as BP and Dudley in calling for state intervention to tackle climate change, making the BP boss's links to Inhofe campaign finance more controversial.

Last week Obama said it was "disturbing" that Inhofe had been made chair of the senate environment committee. In broader criticism of unnamed political opponents, he then went on to say: "In some cases you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry. And there is a lot of money involved."

Inhofe is unabashed about election campaign financing he receives from the industry. In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, he wrote: "Whenever the media asked me how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, my unapologetic answer was 'not enough'."

According to data compiled from public filings by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Inhofe's campaign raised $4.84m between 2009 and 2014, with $1.77m coming from PACs, many of them sponsored by fossil fuel companies.

BP's PAC was more active in the US 2014 election cycle than any other for more than a decade. Despite insisting it is non-partisan, 69% of contributions to federal election candidates in recent years have been to Republican politicians. This is a stronger bias than most other corporate PACs, according to the CRP.

Not all recipients of BP PAC donations are climate change sceptics. Indeed, among other top recipients in recent years has been Steny Hoyer, House Democrat whip, one of the strongest advocates for government measures to tackle climate change.

There are, however, other leading recipients who have attracted criticism from climate change campaigners, including Republican House speaker John Boehner and fellow Republican, Sen Mike Enzi from Wyoming.

When asked his views on climate change in January, Boehner said : "We've had changes in our climate, although scientists debate the sources, in their opinion, of that change. But I think the real question is that every proposal out of this administration with regard to climate change means killing American jobs."

"I don't see [Obama] as trying to control pollution. I see him trying to put business out of business," Enzi said last year.

Campaign contributions is just one aspect of US political engagement linked to BP and its staff. Filings show the oil and gas group spends millions on lobbying efforts.

The CRP classifies BP as a "heavy hitter", ranking it among the top 140 biggest overall donors to federal elections since 1988. Its PAC ranks as the six largest such body with a sponsor company that is ultimately part of a non-US multinational.

Those on the PAC board, deciding how to spend staff donations, are senior executives and lawyers at the company. The board's vice-chair is Bob Stout, BP's Washington-based head of regulatory affairs, who also sits on the group's global policy making body. Dudley does not sit on the PAC board.

According to its website, the PAC makes donations to "candidates who support the principles of free enterprise and good government, support a fair and reasonable business environment for the energy industry and share our philosophy that energy diversity advances energy security." It says staff contributions are encouraged but stresses they are voluntary. The first BP PAC contribution to Inhofe's 2014 campaign was a given on 12 March 2012. This $1,000 donation came just two weeks after the publication of Inhofe's book The Greatest Hoax, cementing his credentials as the most outspoken denier of climate change in US politics.

Publicising the book, the senator gave a radio interview on Voice of Christian Youth America. "God is still up there," he said. "The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what he is doing in the climate to me is outrageous."

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate change: Coalition accused of politicising greenhouse gas target;
Greg Hunt says figures exaggerated under Labor but former Liberal leader John Hewson says both parties use same projections and that such interference is 'damaging to the national interest'

BYLINE: Lenore Taylor political editor

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 935 words

The Abbott government has been accused of politicising the release of official greenhouse gas projections that confirm Australia's international climate change pledge for 2020 is becoming easier to reach, but which will also increase pressure for Australia to adopt a more ambitious post-2020 target.

The official figures have shown that the total greenhouse gas reduction required to meet Australia's bipartisan minimum target of a 5% cut by 2020 is now 236m tonnes, a decrease on previous estimates.

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, said the previous projections had been "Labor's numbers" and that the lower projections were "because Labor's numbers exaggerated the abatement task by more than a billion tonnes of emissions".

"Labor used these figures in an attempt to justify the world's largest carbon tax that hurt families and businesses by pushing up electricity prices," Hunt said.

The former Liberal leader John Hewson said the official projections were, and always had been, produced by the environment department based on the best available evidence at the time.

"Both parties have always based their policies on these projections. To try to politicise them in this way is enormously counterproductive and damaging to the national interest," Hewson said.

Professor Ross Garnaut, Labor's former climate change adviser, said there was "nothing at all political in the change in trajectory ... these figures have been produced in the same way since the Howard years".

The official figures attributed the decrease to "lower electricity demand ... due to the uptake of household solar, energy efficiency and increased retail prices; worse-than-expected agricultural conditions due to drought; lower manufacturing output due to industrial closures and weaker growth expectations for local coal production due to a fall in international coal prices".

The latest forecasts are very close to private estimates, including those from Frontier Economics, published by Guardian Australia in September 2014, which calculated Australia's task to 2020 would be about 225m tonnes.

The revised figures mean the task of reducing emissions by 5% requires less than a third of the effort envisaged when both major parties signed up to the 2020 target.

In 2012 the promise to reduce emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 was calculated to require the cumulative reduction of 755m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In 2014 new government calculations reduced that figure to 421m tonnes.

The new figures were based on the assumption that the renewable energy target is reduced to a "real 20%" - something the government has yet to agree with Labor. If it is unable to achieve this reduction and the existing RET remains, additional renewable energy is likely to take greenhouse emissions even lower.

The figures explain why the government remains confident it can meet the target even though it has repealed the carbon tax and has not yet begun auctions under its $2.55bn "Direct Action" scheme. The first auction will be held in April.

Hunt said the new figures meant the Coalition would "easily meet our commitment to reduce Australia's emissions by 5% from 2000 levels by 2020". But modelling by Sinclair Knight Merz, released during the 2013 election campaign, which found the Coalition would need to find at least another $4bn to meet its target, was based on broadly similar projections.

Energy market analyst RepuTex said it still believed the $2.55bn Emissions Reduction Fund, on its own, would fail to meet the 2020 target - even taking the new projections into account.

"We forecast that the ERF will purchase between 80m and 120m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions abatement. This is equivalent to around half of Australia's new 2020 abatement task," RepuTex said.

RepuTex said that to meet the target the government would have to establish a "baseline and credit" emissions trading scheme, using so-called safeguards mechanisms that have been legislated but not yet explained in detail.

The government is soon to release a discussion paper on how it will set its post-2020 emissions reduction target. It will announce this target mid-year, ahead of the United Nations conference in Paris in December.

The Climate Institute thinktank said the new figures did not explain how the government would meet its 2020 emissions reduction targets, let alone deeper cuts after 2020.

Its chief executive, John Connor, said: "It's not much use to say that the job has got easier when you still don't have the tools to do it properly."

"Without a plan to modernise and decarbonise our economy, Australia's ballooning pollution through 2020 and beyond will require massive dollops of taxpayer funds if the primary policy tool remains the Emissions Reduction Fund."

"These new projections are consistent with independent modelling that shows the government's policies still aren't up to the task of cutting Australian emissions even by the minimum amount we've committed to, let alone match comparable countries' efforts or drive the deeper decarbonisation we will need over coming decades. The government has provided no modelling to argue otherwise."

Garnaut said the government's optimism was also based on a continuation of recent reductions in electricity emissions, which "were helped by a carbon price and have been hindered by recent policy developments".

The total task of reducing emissions by 236m tonnes takes into account a "carryover" because Australia exceeded its 2012 reduction target, which actually allowed a small increase in emissions and was easily achieved through calculating the impact of reduced land clearing.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Great Barrier Reef campaign: scientists call for scrapping of coal projects;
Australian coral reef experts say if the mining and port expansion projects go ahead, there will be permanent damage to the reef

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 727 words

Australia's leading coral reef scientists have called for huge coalmining and port developments in Queensland to be scrapped in order to avoid "permanent damage" to the Great Barrier Reef.

The Australian Coral Reef Society (ACRS) report, compiled by experts from five Australian universities and submitted to the United Nations, warns that "industrialising the Great Barrier Reef coastline will cause further stress to what is already a fragile ecosystem."

The report notes that nine proposed mines in the Galilee Basin, in central Queensland, will produce coal that will emit an estimated 705m tonnes of carbon dioxide at capacity - making the Galilee Basin region the seventh largest source of emissions in the world when compared to countries.

Climate change, driven by excess emissions, has been cited as the leading long-term threat to the Great Barrier Reef. Corals bleach and die as water warms and struggle to grow as oceans acidify.

"ACRS believe that a broad range of policies should be urgently put in place as quickly as possible to reduce Australia's record high per capita carbon emissions to a much lower level," the report states.

"Such policies are inconsistent with opening new fossil fuel industries like the mega coalmines of the Galilee Basin. Doing so would generate significant climate change that will permanently damage the outstanding universal value of the Great Barrier Reef."

The warning follows the unveiling of a long-term plan to reverse the reef's decline on Saturday. The strategy, which outlines cuts in pollution flowing onto the reef but sets out no additional action to curb emissions, was hailed by Tony Abbott as evidence that the government was "utterly committed" to the reef's preservation.

In the ACRS report, the scientists urge a rethink on associated plans to expand the Abbot Point port, near the town of Bowen as well as calling for a halt to the Galilee Basin mines, which have broad support from the Queensland and federal governments.

The expansion would make Abbot Point one of the largest coal ports in the world, requiring the dredging of 5m tonnes of seabed to facilitate a significant increase in shipping through the reef.

The report warns dredging will have "substantial negative impacts on surrounding seagrass, soft corals and other macroinvertebrates, as well as turtles, dugongs and other megafauna." Research has shown that coral disease can double in areas close to dredging activity.

The port expansion will also increase the amount of coal dust blowing onto the reef and the risk of shipping strikes upon whales and dugongs, the report states.

Sediment dredged from Abbot Point was initially earmarked to be dumped within the reef's waters, but following a request from Unesco, an alternate onshore plan was devised.

Dr Selina Ward, a reef scientist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the report, said the high-profile campaign around the sediment dumping obscured the more pressing threats to the reef.

"The dumping of the dredge spoil is important but it's not the whole story," she said. "We have the huge background threat of climate change and going ahead with the industrialisation of the coastline just doesn't sit well with that.

"The dredging involves the removal of seagrass beds and it creates sediment plumes that move large distances and cut light out to corals, which need photosynthesis for energy.

"If we have a 2C rise in the world's temperature we'll have bleaching events far more frequently. The outlook really is grim for the reef, but we still have time to turn it around."

Ward said she hoped the report would spur international pressure on Australia to scale back the mines and port. The report will be send to advisors to Unesco's world heritage committee, which will decide whether to officially list the reef as "in danger" in June.

"I don't want to see the Great Barrier Reef listed as in danger, that would be terrible for Australia," Ward said. "I hope the government understands what is at stake. We can have these mines and this port or we can have a healthy reef. We really can't have both."

Queensland's mining industry has also voiced its apprehension over the reef being listed in danger. The Queensland Resources Council said that the listing would harm the economy by triggering potential restrictions on mining activity, port operations and tourism facilities.

LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Corrections and clarifications;
Coltsfoot | Climate change threshold | Gothenburg

BYLINE: Corrections and clarifications column editor

SECTION: NEWS

LENGTH: 206 words

· Because of an editing error, a Country Diary from Sunderland (19 March, page 42) that discussed a close examination of the coltsfoot plant ( Tussilago farfara ) said that the "central disc florets in this composite flower are male. Each has a central anther rising like a piston through the rest of the stamen". In fact, while textbook descriptions of coltsfoot inflorescences do describe the central disc florets as being entirely male, the writer's original observation was that, if one looks closely, it becomes apparent that the central disc florets are in fact structurally hermaphrodite, with a central stigma forcing pollen from a ring of anthers surrounding it.

· A missing word resulted in a piece about climate change saying that limiting the Earth's surface temperature to 2C would make it impossible to burn many fossil fuel reserves, according to a report by the Green European Foundation. The threshold is a surface temperature increase of 2C ( Davey backs switch from coal to green investments, 18 March, page 1).

· A report on the recent shootings in Gothenburg ( Two dead and 10 injured after pub gun attack, 20 March, page 32) wrongly referred to the city as Sweden's third-largest. It is the country's second-largest.

LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Shell oil drilling in Arctic set to get US government permission;
Controversial decision expected from US interior secretary likely to spark protests from campaigners against Anglo-Dutch exploration in seas off Alaska

BYLINE: Terry Macalister

SECTION: BUSINESS

LENGTH: 849 words

The US government is expected this week to give the go-ahead to a controversial plan by Shell to restart drilling for oil in the Arctic.

The green light from Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, will spark protests from environmentalists who have campaigned against proposed exploration by the Anglo-Dutch group in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska.

Jewell will make a formal statement backing the decision as soon as Wednesday, the earliest point at which her department can rubber-stamp an approval given last month given by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

The US Interior Department had been forced to replay the decision-making process after a US federal court ruled last year, in a case brought by environmental groups, that the government had made mistakes in assessing the environmental risks in the drilling programme.

However, the BOEM, an arm of Jewell's department, has backed the drilling after going through the process again, despite revealing in its Environmental Impact Statement "there is a 75% chance of one or more large spills" occurring.

A leading academic, Prof Robert Bea, from the engineering faculty at the University of California in Berkeley, who made a special study of the Deepwater Horizon accident, has raised new concerns that the recent slump in oil prices could compromise safety across the industry as oil producers strive to cut costs. Bea, who has worked as a consultant to BP and Shell, told the Guardian:

"We should all be concerned about tradeoffs between production and protection... With the significant reduction in the price for oil, there are equally significant pressures to reduce costs so that acceptable profitability can be maintained."

Bea was brought in by Shell in 2004 to reviewhow the group had assessed the risks associated with the proposed drilling in the Chukchi Sea. "At the end of the week's discussions, we agreed to disagree," he said.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace argues that drilling in extreme Arctic conditions is always risky, especially during a period when industry is trying to reduce overheads due to a price of $50 per barrel oil.

"Piling cost-cutting pressures onto these contractors, who already have frankly atrocious safety records, doesn't bode well for the Arctic, or the people and wildlife that call it home," said Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace's Arctic campaigner.

But Kronick said the move particularly made no sense in the context of countering global warming. "If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change we can't even burn all the fossil fuels we already have; we definitely don't need to trash what's left of the melting Arctic looking for more.

"Obama needs to show leadership ahead of the Paris climate talks; allowing Arctic drilling in Alaska will seriously undermine that leadership and US credibility."

Ed Davey, the British energy and climate change secretary, has asked the Bank of England to investigate threats to the financial system due to a carbon bubble caused by fossil fuels which cannot be burned because of global warming.

Shell declined to comment on the prospective Arctic go-ahead but has previously said a decision on whether to start drilling again this summer would depend on a number of factors including regulatory and legal certainty.

Ben van Beurden, the chief executive, told a recent financial results conference that he was keen to proceed : "We have retained very significant capability to be ready this year to go ahead. So will we go ahead? Yes, if we can."

On the issue of safety a spokesman for the company said: "We've said clearly that our plans must meet our own high bar as well as the one set by US regulators. Both have taken unprecedented measures to ensure offshore operations and contingency plans in the US Arctic are second to none."

Shell was forced to halt operations in Arctic the middle of 2012 after the failure of a key piece of safety equipment that would be used to tackle oil spills. The situation for the company became worse when the drilling rig it was using, the Kulluk, ran aground after it was being towed back to port.

A US coast guard report into the incident was heavily critical of the incident and Noble Drilling, which was working for Shell, was slapped with $12m worth of fines and community payments.

Shell hoped to restart in 2013 and then again in 2014 but failed after a series of legal challenges and other setbacks.

Despite its determination to press ahead in the Arctic, Shell aims to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future, backing a resolution from activist shareholders to be debated at its May annual general meeting. This requires Shell to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world's nations to limit global warming to a further rise of 2C.

The group also says it has always made clear that cost cutting must never compromise safety and remains committed to the highest safety initiatives through a Goal Zero initiative. "Goal Zero captures the belief that we can operate without fatalities or significant incidents despite the often difficult conditions in which we operate."

LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Tony Abbott unveils plan to save Great Barrier Reef;
Prime minister sets out targets to reduce pollution in plan aimed at allaying Unesco's concerns but criticised for lack of attention to climate change

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 728 words

Australia has submitted its long-term plan to arrest the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, with Tony Abbott stressing to the international community that the government is "utterly committed" to the reef's preservation.

The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan has been compiled to allay concerns from Unesco over the fading health of the reef, with the organisation's world heritage committee set to meet in June to decide whether the reef is to be listed as "in danger."

The plan sets a number of targets to reduce pollution running on to the reef, including an 80% reduction in nitrogen and a 50% cut in sediment by 2025.

The final version of the strategy has been re-written to include the policies of Queensland's new Labor government, which has pledged to ban the dumping of dredged sediment in the reef's world heritage area and to provide $100m over five years to improve water quality.

For its part, the federal government is banning dumping in the reef's marine park and announced a further $100m in funding for the Reef Trust, a body that will work with landowners to ensure chemicals are not flowing into the coral ecosystem.

There will also be a new independent scientific panel, headed by the government's chief scientist, Ian Chubb, which will oversee the work of the Reef Trust.

Abbott said the government was helping to ensure that the reef is "handed on in the best possible condition to our children and grandchildren".

"Australia is telling its international partners that we are utterly committed as an entire nation to the protection of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world," he said.

"If there was only one thing in the world that was heritage listed, this would be it.

"We're making our position clear right around the world: this is a number one priority of the Australian government to protect the Great Barrier Reef."

Abbott said representations had been made at the "highest level" to countries that comprise the world heritage committee to ensure the "in danger" listing is avoided.

Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, said he was in the process of visiting "a great number" of the 21 countries that sit on the committee and that the feedback so far had been "very positive".

Abbott added: "We are all conservationists, we are all utterly committed to protecting this priceless environmental asset of which we are today's custodians.

"Greg has snorkelled on the reef as a youngster, I've done a little bit of snorkelling on the reef myself. I'm probably more of a surfer than a diver, but the last thing I'd want to do as prime minister is anything that would compromise the quality of this reef."

The Great Barrier Reef is considered by government scientists to be in poor and worsening condition, having lost half of its coral over over the past 30 years. Pollution, coastal development and a plague of coral-eating starfish have been blamed for its decline.

The greatest long-term threat to the reef is climate change, with scientists criticising the draft reef 2050 plan for its lack of attention to the issue.

Reef experts have voiced concern over the potential development of nine large mines in the Galilee Basin region of Queensland which would, if all operated at full capacity, produce coal that would emit an estimated 705m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year - far more than Australia's national total.

Abbott stressed that climate change "impacts upon our entire world, it's relevant for all reefs including this, the world's greatest reef". But he added that it was "important to continue to strengthen our economy because a strong economy and a better environment should go hand in hand".

Dermot O'Gorman, chief executive of WWF Australia, said: "It's good that the plan has reflected the commitments of the ALP and that those commitments are in the 2050 plan. The $100m for the reef trust is well short of the billions not millions that the science says is needed to turn the Great Barrier Reef around."

Greenpeace was more critical. Campaigner Jessica Panegyres said the 2050 reef plan paid "lip service to reef protection" and did little to deal with the issue of climate change.

Mark Butler, Labor's environment spokesman, said the Coalition's climate policies were "woeful" and said that the state Labor government had intervened to ensure the protection of the Great Barrier Reef was taken seriously.

LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Exxon shareholders lose out on vote over high-risk carbon projects;
The US Securities and Exchange Commission rules against allowing Exxon's shareholders to vote on whether to stop investing in high-carbon projects, but in favor of a near-identical proposal at ChevronInvestors ask oil companies to disclose refineries' risks from climate changeClimate change: why Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and center

BYLINE: Siri Srinivas

SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

LENGTH: 754 words

ExxonMobil shareholders will not be able to vote on whether the oil company should stop investing in risky, high-carbon projects after failing to win support from the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

Wednesday's decision not to require the proxy vote comes a week after the federal agency ruled in favor of including a near-identical shareholder proposal on the Chevron proxy ballot in May.

Both proposals, represented by Arjuna Capital and nonprofit As You Sow, aim to pressure oil companies to stop investing in expensive fossil-fuel extraction projects - such as ultra deepwater, arctic drilling and tar sands projects - and instead share that money with investors as dividends.

Related: Al Gore: oil companies 'use our atmosphere as an open sewer'

An attorney-adviser for the SEC said that the commission's decision stemmed from its conclusion that Exxon has already partially implemented the proposal by increasing dividends.

Natasha Lamb, director of shareholder engagement at Arjuna Capital, called the ruling bizarre, confusing and based on a technicality. "It's a very odd ruling in part because even if dividends and share buybacks are going up, a shareholder still has the right to increase in the amounts of capital distributed."

"It seems as though they are grasping at straws for a reason to not to [uphold shareholders' demands]," she said.

Last week's ruling on Chevron was the first time the SEC upheld a shareholder proposal for increased returns based on climate change.

Related: A new study urges leaving fossil fuels in the ground. How will it affect business?

Chevron initially challenged the resolution, but the SEC's ruling means that the issue will now go to a vote at Chevron's annual shareholder meeting on May 27.

Many oil companies have been facing pressure from investor groups to disclose financial risks from climate change. The pressure comes on top of the challenge sometimes described as "peak oil", or the rising costs of maintaining production volume as the easiest-to-get reserves are depleted.

The easy oil is gone, Lamb said. Oil companies are scrambling to invest in oil that's harder and more expensive - and therefore less profitable - to extract in a bid to keep up production. Ultra-deepwater drilling, Arctic drilling and tar sands projects, for example, "cost a lot more money and are carbon-intensive", Lamb said. "What we've seen in the industry over the last 10 years is that capital expenditure has increased 100% - it has doubled - and crude oil production has actually decreased 3%."

Related: Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges

Some shareholders are concerned not only about the immediate risk of reduced returns, but also the longer-term risk of investing in fossil-fuels projects that could end up being unprofitable and unsaleable if governments cap emissions amid global climate talks. Several studies have concluded that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves must remain unburned to prevent catastrophic climate change.

So-called "stranded" assets could cause major damage to oil companies' profitability, Lamb said. "The risk [is] that we can only pump that much CO2 into the atmosphere before we cause catastrophic climate change," she said. "These companies should be forward-thinking and make strategic decisions that position them as not just fossil-fuel companies, but energy companies."

In a report in April, ExxonMobil wrote that it doesn't expect any of its fossil fuel reserves will be stranded. Meanwhile, in a shareholder letter in May, Shell said it doesn't believe any of its proven reserves will become stranded either.

Related: Fossil fuel industry must take stranded assets seriously, says Tim Yeo

Rising shareholder interest in assessing the impact of climate change on business has attracted the attention of corporate boards: the BP board last month endorsed a shareholder proposal asking for more disclosure about climate risk, after the Shell board endorsed a similar proposal in January.

As for the latest SEC ruling, Arjuna Capital has not decided whether it will challenge the decision.

Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, said the ruling is not in shareholders' best interests, adding that shareholders have the right to demand increased dividends when a company's current investments put it at risk.

"We will continue to press this with the company to get other shareholders on board, to continue to ask the company to take action and decrease spending on these projects," she said. "We won't go away."

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Senior scientists call on health charities to shift money out of fossil fuels;
Former chief advisers to UK and European commission add their support to Guardian campaign for Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to divest

BYLINE: Ian Sample and Hannah Devlin

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1128 words

Senior scientists including former chief advisers to the UK government and European commission have called on the world's two largest health charities to sell their investments in leading fossil fuel companies.

They argue that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust should offload their holdings in major coal, oil and gas corporations because the investments are undermining the charities' aims.

"There's an anomaly there. It is like giving with the one hand and taking with the other," said Prof Anne Glover, who was chief scientific adviser to the European commission until last year.

"These are leaders. These are people that others look to. So they have enormous responsibility. That's why for me it is important that they react to this."

She said there was a lack of progress in the development of cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels. "Gates and Wellcome and many others are huge investors," she said. "Their endorsement or investment in the accessing and using of fossil fuels - it makes a big impact. If they were to reconsider and think about investing elsewhere, they could use their power as investors in a very positive way."

On Monday, the Guardian launched a major campaign to encourage the two charities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels. By Friday over 100,000 people had signed the petition with supporters including actor Tilda Swinton, activist Bianca Jagger, Costa award-winning author Helen Macdonald and chef Yotam Ottolenghi.

"[By signing the petition], individuals can say that this matters to us. I don't think [the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust] are organisations who don't care about what people think about them. I think that they will listen. It really matters that people make their voice heard," said Glover.

"We have to leave more of the fossil fuel that has sequestered over millennia in the ground," said Lord May, the UK government's former chief scientist. "If we continue to extract it unremittingly, there's no doubt that we are not going to be able to stay within any plausible envelope of a habitable Earth."

Divestment from the most intensive fossil fuel companies would send a clear signal about the urgency of this challenge, he said.

Sir Bob Watson, former adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, also urged the charities to rethink their investments. "The more people invest in fossil fuel companies, the more these companies will exploit fossil fuels," he said.

The scientists have cast a spotlight on the tension between the funders' shareholdings in fossil fuel companies and the grave toll that climate change, driven by burning the fuels, threatens to inflict on public health.

"One of the major impacts of climate change is on human health, especially in developing countries through vector borne disease and heat stress," said Watson. "This is where Wellcome and Gates have put a huge amount of money."

Professor Chris Rapley, former director of the Science Museum, said the position of Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation is "fundamentally inconsistent", adding that as scientific thought leaders, any gesture was particularly powerful.

"We have to confront our own inconsistencies," he said. "Either they accept the argument that we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels or they don't. It's highly symbolic when charities like this make a stand."

But he added that there was still room for the industry to change. "Threats to divest from fossil fuel-based companies and expose the potential carbon bubble, should be tempered in such a way to strongly encourage the industry to invest seriously in solving the technical challenges of carbon capture and storage - or better carbon capture and utilisation."

A spokesman for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said : "Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in this effort and the breakthrough innovations needed and will continue to speak out about it. We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognize that there are many views on how best to address it."

A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policymakers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."

Maria Neira, director of public health and environment at the World Health Organisation, warned last year that climate change will cause an extra 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050, mostly from rises in malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, heat exposure and inadequate nutrition.

Last year Wellcome gave £727m in grants in fields including ebola and cancer research. In total, the Gates Foundation has given $32.9bn in grants to health programmes around the world. Its work focusses on prevention, immunisation and vaccination.

The Wellcome Trust's endowment originates from funds left by Sir Henry Wellcome, the co-founder of a successful multinational pharmaceutical company, after his death in 1936.

"Given that Henry Wellcome essentially gave away his fortune in the hope of making the world better, I can only believe that he would be on the side of the people who want to keep the carbon in the ground," Lord May said.

The global divestment movement, which is encouraging investors to sell their fossil fuel holdings is growing rapidly with over 200 organisations worth over £33bn signed up.

The driving force for many is the calculation that existing fossil fuel reserves already hold far more carbon than can be burned while still having a hope of keeping the global temperature rise below 2C.

"If we don't do that we are leaving a dreadful legacy for the next generation," said Glover.

Sir Martin Rees, of the University of Cambridge and former president of the Royal Society, said: "Obviously it's important that most fossil fuel reserves remain underground, rather than being exploited."

However, the case for divestment is less obvious, he argues. "I think our cause would be far more effectively boosted if Bill Gates stood up and made eloquent speeches at [ExxonMobil's] AGM than by divestment," he said. "The one thing that is clear, I think, is that large charities shouldn't hold big shareholdings in these companies and remain passive."

Sir John Beddington, former government chief scientist, agreed that fossil fuel reserves could not continue to be burnt without major technological advances in carbon capture technology, although stopped short of backing the call for divestment. "The sums are pretty clear," he said. "What's under the ground cannot be burnt within a 2C framework unless you have some method of sequestering the carbon dioxide or that you change in other ways."

Additional reporting by James Randerson

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

The biggest story in the world: inside the Guardian's climate change campaign;
How was Keep it in the Ground created? Our audio documentary series tells the inside story of how the team came to an agreement on focusing on fossil fuel divestment

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 438 words

How do you cover the biggest story in the world?

This was the question on the lips of the 20 Guardian journalists who met in the first few days of the new year to debate editor Alan Rusbridger's new project on climate change.

Keep it in the Ground is the project that has emerged, but how did we get there?

This being one of the most complex stories of our time, we wanted the process of our decision making to be transparent. Alan asked Francesca Panetta, co-creator of the award-winning Firestorm interactive, how we could showcase the inside story to our readers.

She decided to create an audio documentary series and from that point on we started to record our internal meetings. "The biggest story in the world" is a weekly podcast, which you can subscribe to here.

The first episode tells the story of how the project first emerged - which for most of the journalists involved came in the form of an email on Christmas Eve from Alan Rusbridger.

It read:

"Colleagues, This time next year I won't be the editor of the Guardian: indeed, well before that I'll have stepped down. I'm not at all depressed. This is the right time to be moving on. But I do have an urge to do something powerful, focused and important with the Guardian while I'm still here. And it will be about climate change. Sometimes there's a story so enormous that conventional journalism struggles to cope with it, never mind do justice. The imminent threat to the species is the most existentially important story any of us could imagine telling - for our sakes, for our children and for their children. But, as journalists, we also know that we sometimes tire of telling, and that people tire of reading."

The latest episode takes place in the new year with the team searching for an angle. There is debate and disagreement. Who is to blame? Do we target governments or corporations? George Monbiot says we should focus on a global political solution, such as a carbon auction, to put on the table at the climate conference in Paris.

James Randerson prefers a more practical solution that readers can get their teeth stuck into - could we take inspiration from the global divestment movement founded by Bill McKibben at 350.org ? Investigative journalist Felicity Lawrence agrees: "the powerful thing about divestment is that it provides a moral framework that people can get behind."

How did we come to an agreement? You can follow the inside story of the Keep in the Ground campaign every week by subscribing to our podcast. Are we debating the right issues and making the right decisions? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Green news roundup: Guardian climate campaign, Arctic sea ice and ducks;
The week's top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

BYLINE: Environment editor

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 391 words

Keep it in the Ground - the Guardian's climate campaign

We're calling on the world's two biggest charitable funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust, to shift their money out of fossil fuels. Please join us and sign the petition here.

Environment news

On the blogs

Multimedia

Features and comment

And finally...

We feed six million loaves of bread a year to ducks in England and Wales causing damage to birds' health and polluting waterways. Oats, corn and peas are safer for the birds

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Florida employee 'punished for using phrase climate change';
In a complaint against the state, worker says he was accused of violating policy and instructed to get a mental health evaluation after mentioning climate change

BYLINE: Katherine Krueger in New York

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 472 words

An employee of Florida's environmental protection department was forced to take a leave of absence and seek a mental health evaluation for violating governor Rick Scott's unwritten ban on using the phrases "climate change" or "global warming" under any circumstance, according to a complaint filed against the state.

Longtime employee Barton Bibler reportedly included an explicit mention of climate change in his official notes from a Florida Coastal Managers Forum meeting in late February, during which climate change, rising sea levels and the possible environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline were discussed.

Related: Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre | Alan Rusbridger

On 9 March, Bibler received a formal reprimand for "misrepresenting that 'the official meeting agenda included climate change'", according to a statement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a nationwide non-profit that champions public employees' rights and providers resources and guidance to whistleblowers using its network of members across the country.

Bibler was instructed to stay away from the office for two days and told he could return to work only after a mental health evaluation from his doctor verified his "fitness for duty", the complaint said. In the letter to Florida's inspector general, Candie Fuller, the state's Peer director calls for a full investigation to the matter.

Bibler told the Miami Herald that he "didn't get the memo" about the gag order, so when he introduced himself by congratulating other officials on the call for the "exciting" work they were doing to address climate change, the "reaction was mostly shock".

News of the governor's ban on the phrases first surfaced in early March, when the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that the ban came from the top after Scott took office and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr as DEP director.

Guardian requests for comment from Scott, the Florida inspector general and the environmental protection department were not immediately returned on Thursday, but Scott and representatives from his office have ardently denied such a policy exists.

Related: Republicans' new climate strategy: just ban the words 'climate change' | Jeb Lund

Scott has also long dodged questions about climate change with a refrain of "I'm not a scientist" and consistently misrepresented the state's preparedness for rising sea levels.

Florida is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as 80% of the state's residents live or work near the coasts and damage from recent storms, including hurricane Wilma, has caused billions of dollars in damage since 2005.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Guardian climate change petition reaches 100k signatures;
Actor Tilda Swinton and chef Yotam Ottolenghi are among 100,000 people who have supported the campaign calling for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 924 words

A Guardian petition which calls for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ditch their fossil fuel investments has gathered more than 100,000 signatures since it launched on Monday.

The campaign asks the world's two largest charitable foundations to divest from the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies within five years and to immediately freeze any new investments. It was launched by Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in partnership with the global climate movement 350.org.

High profile signatories include Scottish actor Tilda Swinton and Professor Anne Glover, the former chief scientific adviser to the president of the European commission.

The campaign has also attracted the support of activist Bianca Jagger, Costa award-winning author Helen Macdonald and Rou Reynolds from the band Enter Shikari, while chef Yotam Ottolenghi said he backed it "because we're running out of time and it's pretty terrifying".

Rusbridger said: "The argument for a campaign to divest from the world's most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don't start one unless you know you're going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable."

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said: "We're at a tipping point and it's become clear that people and institutions of good conscience have to cut these ties. Now 100,000 people from around the world have combined to say that these giant philanthropies need to walk their talk."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have more than $1.4bn (£1bn) invested in fossil fuel companies, according to a Guardian analysis of their most recent tax filings in 2013. The charity has already given out $33bn in grants to global health programmes, including those dedicated to tackling the spread of malaria, polio and HIV.

The Wellcome Trust, which is one of the world's largest funders of medical research, has an endowment of over £18bn. In 2014, a minimum of £450m was invested in fossil fuel companies including Shell, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and BP.

More than 200 institutions worldwide have now either divested from fossil fuels or have committed to do so, including faith organisations, local authorities and universities. In September 2014, a coalition of more than 50 philanthropic organisations and individuals in control of $50bn in assets committed to divestment.

The Wellcome Trust has refused to divest, arguing that its investments allow it to engage with fossil fuel companies, which offer "a better prospect for change than divestment". The foundation was unable to provide the Guardian with examples of this engagement.

A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."

The Gates Foundation refused to comment on its position on fossil fuel divestment, arguing their investments are handled by the Asset Trust, which does not make public statements.

A spokesman for Bill Gates's private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."

The most recent annual letter from the $43.5bn Gates Foundation asks "whether the progress we're predicting will be stifled by climate change. The long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide."

Both the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation sold off their respective £94m and $766m investments in the oil company ExxonMobil, which has funded climate change denial in the past. Both companies refuse to invest in tobacco on moral grounds.

Ed Davey, Minister for Energy and Climate Change backed the Guardian Keep it in the Ground campaign on Tuesday, urging pension and insurance funds to consider divestment from "very risky" coal assets.

Writing in the Guardian, he said: "I want this year's UN climate change negotiations to be the seminal moment when humanity faces up to these challenges. That's why I'm strongly backing the Guardian's campaign to raise the profile of the divestment debate prior to climate change negotiations in Paris in December."

The campaign has also received the backing of the Climate and Health Council, which encouraged the British Medical Association to commit to divestment last year, the first health organisation in the world to do so. Co-chair Dr Robin Stott described the Wellcome Trust's decision to maintain their fossil fuel investments as "a dereliction of duty".

The coalition was one of a number of medical groups that published a report in February, calling on health organisations to divest on moral grounds, as they previously did with tobacco investments. The report cited the UCL/Lancet commission on climate change which described climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century".

Professor Hugh Montgomery, co-author of the report and director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at the University College London said:

"I am backing the Guardian divestment campaign because I support the Gates Foundation and am a great fan of their work. I just want to help them to do more good."

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Our campaign puts climate change where it should be - on the front page;
George Monbiot is supporting the Guardian's Keep it in the ground campaign. But why are so few newspapers willing to tackle the subject of climate change?

BYLINE: George Monbiot

SECTION: MEMBERSHIP

LENGTH: 392 words

Journalism claims to hold power to account. Yet all too often it sides with power against the powerless. Proprietors' interests are stealthily advanced, corporate press releases are disguised as news, favoured businesses and political parties are protected from serious scrutiny.

Above all, power determines the issues that the media treats as significant. Matters of the utmost importance - such as inequality, poverty, exploitation, corporate crime and the destruction of the natural world - are neglected or marginalised, while trivial political gossip is elevated to the status of major news.

Related: Keep it in the ground: Guardian climate change campaign

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the coverage of climate change, the great moral issue of our age. Do we destroy the conditions that support life on Earth? Do we bequeath to our children a scarcely habitable planet? Or do we confront the most powerful corporate lobby of all - the fossil fuel industry - to prevent it from treating the world as its dustbin?

Across much of the media, climate change is either avoided or mocked. The willingness of some newspapers to embrace the denial of climate science - a denial that has been seeded and funded by fossil fuel companies - hints at the profound corruption pervading the press.

Because the Guardian has no proprietor, and therefore no industrial interests to defend, it is able to resist such pressures. On a topic like climate change, its independence is crucial. Our campaign puts the issue where it ought to be: on the front page. By pressing for most fossil fuels to be kept in the ground, this newspaper is seeking to defend the common interests of humanity against an extremely wealthy corporate machine.

It is a David v Goliath battle, but we believe it can be won. Please help us by becoming a Guardian Member and supporting independent journalism. It is one of the last lines of defence against the corporate assault on our magnificent planet.

Join Guardian Membership by 31 March to become a founding member and the price you pay will never rise.

George Monbiot will be in conversation with George Marshall, one of the most eminent thinkers in the world on climate change at a Guardian Members' event on 13 May, at King's Place, London.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Australia urged to shut coal-fired power plants urgently as analysis reveals huge emissions;
Australian Conservation Foundation says US-style regulation should be introduced to force the worst polluting plants to close

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 793 words

The Australian government has been urged to place US-style regulations on coal-fired power plants to ensure they shut down, as a new analysis highlights the vast scale of emissions pumped out by the largest carbon dioxide polluters in the country.

Just 10 companies are responsible for a third of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) study.

"We have got to close down the worst polluting plants in Australia," said Geoff Cousins, ACF's president. "At the moment the government is offering no incentives for companies to get off fossil fuels."

Cousins said he would welcome the kind of direct regulations placed by Barack Obama's US administration on coal-fired plants, effectively making them untenable without expensive carbon capture technology.

"In Australia there are taxpayer subsidies to keep these plants open, whereas in the US, China and parts of Europe, the government is taking actual direct action to close them down," Cousins said.

When direct and indirect emissions, such as energy consumption by a coal power station, are considered, the top 10 polluters emitted 158m tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2013-14. Most of this pollution comes from the production and use of energy.

The list is headed by Energy Australia, responsible for 20.8m tonnes of heat-trapping gas. Macquarie Generation, at 20.3m tonnes, and AGL Energy, at 19.9m tonnes, are in second and third position.

The rest of the top 10 comprises energy and mining giants, including Rio Tinto, Origin Energy and Alcoa.

EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy chalked up the largest rises in emissions from 2012-13 to 2013-14, at 66% and 230% respectively. This was due to the companies buying power stations previously owned by the New South Wales government.

A separate ranking of Australia's most polluting power stations is dominated by ageing power stations burning carbon-intensive brown coal in Victoria's La Trobe valley.

Hazelwood, owned by GDY Suez, emits 15.5m tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, followed in the rankings by Yallourn and Loy Yang B.

The ACF report also notes the political donations made by the large energy and mining companies. For example, EnergyAustralia donated more than $45,000 to the Labor and Coalition parties, at both state and federal level, in 2013-14.

Victoria has previously considered shutting down its most polluting power stations, only for the plan to be shelved.

The introduction of carbon pricing included a large hand-out to the brown coal polluters, while the federal Coalition's new Direct Action plan, which provides voluntary grants to lower emissions, is aimed at "cleaning up" power plants rather than shutting them down.

The UN's IPCC has said that fossil fuel energy without largely unproven carbon capture technology must be phased out by the end of the century if the world is to avoid highly dangerous climate change.

The ACF said Australia needed to start phasing out fossil fuels, pointing to Energy Supply Association of Australia data that shows wind and solar energy projects already earmarked could provide a quarter of Australia's electricity demand by 2023-24

"These companies should not be paid to shut down," Cousins said. "There should be compensation for redundancies and retraining, but to pay them to shut down is wrong."

But a spokesman for Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, said: "Labor ran a failed contract-for-closure program. By contrast, we have passed the emissions reduction fund which is about to hold its first auction.

"We are not about to abandon our legislated policy in favour of an utterly failed policy."

Cousins said there was a "real disconnect" between large energy companies acknowledging the risks posed by climate change and their opposition to the renewable energy target, a measure to increase clean energy that the Coalition wants to pare back.

"I think it will be very possible to change the policies of the government on this matter," Cousins said. "There has been a remarkable coming together of events - climate change got on the G20 agenda against the wishes of the government, there was that remarkable speech by Obama at the Queensland University and there was the China-US climate deal.

"I think this has led the population to realise that we are being left behind, that the government has pulled the wool over our eyes. And now we see fossil fuels and climate change are back in the top five areas of concern in voting intentions. It's clear the government is completely out of kilter with the rest of the world."

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Who are really Australia's top climate polluters?;
A list of Australia's top ten greenhouse gas emitters would look different if fossil fuel firms were seen as responsible for the burning of their products

BYLINE: Graham Readfearn

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1339 words

Environment group the Australian Conservation Foundation released a top ten list yesterday.

Now as any human of the internet age knows, lists of things are almost as difficult to ignore as compilations of cats falling off furniture or GIFs of baby elephants.

Sadly, the ACF's list isn't as much fun.

The list, Australia's Top Ten Climate Polluters, used public government data of greenhouse gases emitted in Australia.

The ten most polluting companies - led by Energy Australia, which generates electricity mainly through burning coal and gas - make up almost one third of the country's entire emissions.

The report also juxtaposes those companies' huge greenhouse gas footprints with statements they have made about climate change.

Many of them say they're worried about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (but not worried enough, some would fairly point out, to get out of the business of being major contributors to the problem).

Last September, the company in third place, AGL, bought the company in second place, Macquarie Generation, meaning that AGL is likely now Australia's top emitter. But more about AGL later.

The ACF uses the established methodology of including emissions that companies generate from their operations, such as burning coal for electricity or running trucks on petrol.

But that doesn't include emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that some companies extract and sell to other people.

If you did include those emissions then the top ten list would look very different.

Take for example miner Rio Tinto, which occupies fourth spot on the ACF list with emissions of 18 million tonnes of CO2 last year.

Rio Tinto emits greenhouse gases due to the energy-intensive nature of its mining, processing and smelting operations.

Rio Tinto's coal mining operation is concentrated in Australia. In the company's 2014 annual report, Rio Tinto says the burning of its coal by its customers (for both power and steel making) was responsible for a further 129 Mt of CO2. That's quite a bit more than 18 Mt.

It's also quite a bit more than the 20.8 Mt of CO2 emitted by Australia's "top ranked" emitter, EnergyAustralia.

A very rough rule of thumb on coal is that each tonne burned for power emits about two and half times that in carbon dioxide emissions.

Glencore-Xstrata exported some 54 million tonnes of coal for power generation last year, but it is not on the ACF list even though the emissions from that coal are likely well above 100 Mt of CO2.

Neither is BHP Billiton on the ACF list - a company which exported about 21 Mt of thermal coal in 2014.

Yet assigning emissions to the companies that extract the fossil fuels is not a new idea.

A study in the journal Climatic Change released in November 2013 also assigned emissions to the corporations who had extracted the fossil fuels.

The report found that since the start of the industrial revolution just 90 companies caused 63 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

A study led by CSIRO scientists in 2010 found that emissions caused by the burning Australian fossil fuels exported overseas were more than double the level of emissions generated by burning fossil fuels domestically. Yet those emissions don't appear on Australia's national greenhouse accounts.

Altogether, Australia exported some 201 Mt of coal for power generation last year.

I spoke to Kelly O'Shanassy, the CEO of ACF, and asked her about the way the report was put together.

Internationally the way they account for pollution goes to the organisation directly responsible for it, so if we ship coal to India then the company there that burns it is responsible for the pollution. However, the company in Australia that dug it up has some responsibility because it is their product that has polluted the global climate and is causing the damage globally. So I think we might in future years include other scopes in that work. The companies are still making money from pollution.

O'Shanassy revealed the report marked the beginning of a shift in approach for ACF, which she said had previously played "the inside game" of working with governments.

Whilst we have had success in those approaches, what has happened is that governments have come in and just unwound the progress. It's not going to work anymore to be just quietly asking governments to do the right thing. So the purpose of this report is to say - we are going to hold you to account and we are going to go out to all Australians and build a huge constituency in this country to make sure you do what Australians want you to do. If governments put the interests of polluters above those of Australians then we need to start to grow a force to support clean energy, not coal. This is definitely a shift in our focus.

She said they would also be working to build "community power" and to work with major financial investors to encourage them to get their money out of fossil fuels.

We respect the role of politicians, but we don't think they are doing enough. There's a great saying that the power of the people is greater than the people in power. I think the people in power forget that sometimes. We are going to remind them.

O'Shanassy said a key reason for putting the report together was to highlight the disparity between what companies do and what they say about climate change.

We have got to start holding them to account for what they actually do. It's pretty easy to put greenwash out there. Business sustainability is about what you produce, not whether you change lightbulbs in the corporate office. If those companies produce coal then that has a massive impact and we are going to hold them accountable for that. Many of these companies have actually increased their emissions in recent times. We will be putting out this report every year to track their progress.

That brings us to third-ranked AGL, which last September bought Macquarie Generation, the former New South Wales Government-owned coal generator occupying second spot in the top ten polluter list.

The ACF report places AGL's statements of concern for climate change and emissions reductions with its position on Australia's renewable energy target, which AGL says should be revised downwards.

AGL sent me a statement, saying its position was not contradictory and had research to back up its view.

The statement said there was "little point in maintaining the target without complementary policy that ensures older emissions intensive power stations are permanently retired" which was consistent with a policy goal of "decarbonisation".

In effect, such policy would ensure that as new renewables are built, older emissions intensive power stations are removed from the system - ensuring a sustainable investment environment.

In a separate statement, AGL said climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were "a long term challenge requiring long term and lasting solutions" and the company recognised it was a large emitter with a "key role to play" in cutting its emissions.

The statement added the company had $3 billion worth of investments in renewable energy and 17 per cent of the energy it did generate came from renewables.

AGL has a range of programs and policies in place to reduce its GHG emissions, including improving the GHG efficiency of our operations and those which we have an influence on.

Now all that may be true.

But how does this sit with AGL's decision to buy Macquarie Generation last year? Here's what they bought.

MacGen is the largest producer of electricity in New South Wales. The assets include the Bayswater (2,640 MW) and Liddell (2,000 MW) black coal fired power stations, Hunter Valley Gas Turbines (50 MW), Bayswater B and Tomago development sites, Liddell solar farm, extensive coal handling infrastructure comprising rail unloaders and conveyor systems, 104 million tonnes of contracted coal and approximately 4.2 million tonne coal stockpile.

I have to wonder why a company concerned about climate change and cutting its emissions would buy another company with an annual greenhouse gas footprint of 20 million tonnes?

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

McConnell Wants States' Help Against an Obama 'War on Coal'

BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT

SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1353 words

WASHINGTON -- Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has begun an aggressive campaign to block President Obama's climate change agenda in statehouses and courtrooms across the country, arenas far beyond Mr. McConnell's official reach and authority.

The campaign of Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is aimed at stopping a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring states to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Once enacted, the rules could shutter hundreds of coal-fired plants in what Mr. Obama has promoted as a transformation of the nation's energy economy away from fossil fuels and toward sources like wind and solar power. Mr. McConnell, whose home state is one of the nation's largest coal producers, has vowed to fight the rules.

Since Mr. McConnell is limited in how he can use his role in the Senate to block regulations, he has taken the unusual step of reaching out to governors with a legal blueprint for them to follow to stop the rules in their states. Mr. McConnell's Senate staff, led by his longtime senior energy adviser, Neil Chatterjee, is coordinating with lawyers and lobbying firms to try to ensure that the state plans are tangled up in legal delays.

On Thursday, Mr. McConnell sent a detailed letter to every governor in the United States laying out a carefully researched legal argument as to why states should not comply with Mr. Obama's regulations. In the letter, Mr. McConnell wrote that the president was ''allowing the E.P.A. to wrest control of a state's energy policy.''

To make his case, Mr. McConnell is also relying on a network of powerful allies with national influence and roots in Kentucky or the coal industry. Within that network is Laurence H. Tribe, a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a former mentor of Mr. Obama's. Mr. Tribe caught Mr. McConnell's attention last winter when he was retained to write a legal brief for Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal producer, in a lawsuit against the climate rules.

In the brief, Mr. Tribe argued that Mr. Obama's use of the existing Clean Air Act to put forth the climate change regulations was unconstitutional. He then echoed that position in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. He argued that in requiring states to cut carbon emissions, and thus to change their energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.

Peabody Energy has been the fourth-largest contributor to Mr. McConnell's election campaigns over the course of his political career, and his office maintains close and frequent communication with the company.

In addition to stopping state-level enactment of the climate rules, Mr. McConnell's strategy is intended to undercut Mr. Obama's position internationally as he tries to negotiate a global climate change treaty to be signed in Paris in December. The idea is to create uncertainty in the minds of other world leaders as to whether the United States can follow through on its pledges to cut emissions.

''We've seen modern lobbying strategies that become a very large campaign, coordinated with states and localities, but we've never seen a Senate majority leader or House speaker in front of it,'' said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. ''It's quite clever. It's sophisticated and unusual.''

As he campaigned across Kentucky's economically ravaged coal towns last fall, Mr. McConnell frequently declared that he would do everything in his power to battle what he calls Mr. Obama's ''war on coal.''

Although Republicans now control both chambers of Congress and could summon a simple majority of votes for legislation to block or delay the climate regulations, they do not have the majorities necessary to override a Democratic filibuster or a presidential veto. Blocking Mr. Obama's climate policies is also difficult for lawmakers because the regulations largely sidestepped Congress.

Using its existing authority, the E.P.A. will require each state to submit an individual plan for cutting emissions from power plants. Ultimately, the success or failure of the plan will depend on how -- and if -- states comply with the rules. It will also depend on the courts. Coal-dependent states and coal mining companies are already planning legal challenges to the regulations.

Those coal-dependent states are where Mr. McConnell has trained his fire.

Mr. McConnell opened his campaign on March 3 with an op-ed article published in The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky with the headline, ''States should reject Obama mandate for clean-power regulations.'' Mr. McConnell urged governors to refuse to submit climate change compliance plans to the E.P.A., citing the arguments of Mr. Tribe.

Mr. McConnell contends that the Obama administration has bypassed Congress and stretched the boundaries of existing law to impose climate change regulations -- and that he intends to step outside of Congress and use creative legal methods to push back.

''The E.P.A. is bypassing Congress and the American people by unilaterally proposing these crippling regulations that would wreak havoc on our economy and are clearly unprecedented,'' he said. ''I have used and will continue to use all of the tools available to protect families and jobs, whether that be in Congress, or outside of the legislative process.''

Advocates of Mr. Obama's climate change agenda called Mr. McConnell's actions nearly unprecedented, and a spokesman for the White House assailed Mr. McConnell's moves.

''Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges that we face, and instead of offering solutions, Senator McConnell's alternative is an inappropriate and unfounded attempt to dictate state decisions,'' said Frank Benenati, the spokesman. ''E.P.A. is following the law by proposing clean-air standards to tackle the largest sources of carbon pollution -- the power sector,'' he said.

While some governors oppose the climate change plan, others are preparing to comply. On Thursday, the National Governors Association announced that four states -- Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Utah -- would take part in a program to prepare to meet the climate-change regulations.

But longtime experts in the field of climate change law and policy say that Mr. McConnell's unconventional efforts could prove formidable.

''The majority leader is a master tactician,'' said Scott Segal, a lobbyist with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani and the director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents power companies. ''He understands the legal vulnerabilities, and he's acutely aware that not all solutions go through traditional legislative channels.''

Over the coming weeks and months, Mr. McConnell's office intends to continue to push to undermine the climate regulations, using a host of legal, lobbying and legislative tools.

Less than a week after Mr. McConnell's op-ed article citing Mr. Tribe, Mr. McConnell's friend and fellow Republican, Representative Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, was the chairman of a House hearing designed to highlight the legal challenges to the climate change law. Mr. Whitfield called as his star witness Mr. Tribe -- who in testimony likened Mr. Obama's climate change rules to ''burning the Constitution.''

In April, Mr. Tribe, representing Peabody Energy, is set to deliver oral arguments in the first federal court case about Mr. Obama's climate change rules.

Mr. McConnell's efforts come on top of an initial groundswell of efforts by Republican governors from coal-dependent states to push back at the rules. Twelve states have already filed suit against the rules.

In Washington, a coalition of nearly 200 industry and lobbying groups, led by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, has been working together for months on a set of legal and legislative tactics, both in Washington and the states, to block the rules.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-urges-states-to-help-thwart-obamas-war-on-coal.html

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, urged the nation's governors not to comply with President Obama's climate rules. (A1)
Senator Mitch McConnell, center, wants to stop rules requiring a reduction in carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A20)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Obama's Order to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Federal Government

BYLINE: By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 818 words

WASHINGTON -- President Obama signed an executive order on Thursday to set new goals for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of federal agencies, his latest use of his executive authority to address the root causes of climate change and press private companies and foreign governments to follow suit.

Mr. Obama's directive orders federal agencies over the next decade to cut their emissions by an average of 40 percent compared with their levels when he won office in 2008, and to increase their use of electricity from renewable sources by 30 percent.

The goals are in line with a commitment that he announced in November as part of a climate agreement with China. In the deal, Mr. Obama said the United States would reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

They are also part of Mr. Obama's effort during his last two years in office to use an expansive interpretation of his presidential authority to push ahead with unilateral moves to combat climate change in the face of strong opposition from the Republican-controlled Congress to advancing legislation that would do so.

''We're proving that it is possible to grow our economy robustly while at the same time doing the right thing for our environment and tackling climate change in a serious way,'' Mr. Obama said during a visit to the Energy Department on Thursday to announce the order. ''America once again is going to be leading by example.''

The federal government's share of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is minuscule -- less than 1 percent in 2013, the last year for which data is available -- so the order by itself is unlikely to make a major dent in the president's broader goals to cut emissions.

But because the federal government is the largest user of energy in the United States economy -- encompassing 360,000 buildings, 650,000 fleet vehicles and $445 billion in annual spending on goods and services -- it has the potential to influence private companies to step up their emissions-cutting targets.

In conjunction with the executive order, the Obama administration released a new scorecard to allow federal suppliers to disclose their emissions and track their reductions. Several large companies that do business with the federal government -- including I.B.M., General Electric, Honeywell and Northrop Grumman -- announced new emissions-cutting goals of their own.

''As we get economies of scale, and demand for solar and wind and other renewable energies grows, obviously that can help drive down the overall price, make it that much for efficient, and we start getting a virtuous cycle that is good for the economy and creates jobs here in America,'' Mr. Obama said after touring the Energy Department's solar-paneled rooftop.

At a round table with representatives of some of the private corporations taking part, Mr. Obama praised the companies for stepping up with new or enhanced emissions-cutting targets.

''You guys have done an outstanding job,'' he said. ''Because of the prominence of many of the companies here, and the fact that they've got a whole bunch of suppliers up and down the chain, what you do with respect to energy efficiency is going to have a ripple effect throughout the economy.''

Mr. Obama's directive extends a goal he set during his first year in office, when he signed an executive order to cut federal greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020.

Since then, said Christy Goldfuss, the managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, federal agencies have reduced their emissions by 17 percent, and increased, to 9 percent from 3 percent, the share of electricity they consume from renewable sources.

White House officials, who are increasingly describing Mr. Obama's environmental agenda in economic terms, estimated that the directive issued on Thursday could save up to $18 billion over the next decade by cutting down on wasted energy.

''For federal agencies who are looking at how to cover their energy needs, this is a very pragmatic dollars-and-cents issue,'' said Brian Deese, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. ''If they can consume less energy or they can consume renewable energy that is cheaper, more reliable or more sustainable, then they can achieve their environmental goals while they are saving money.''

Having failed during his first term to push a cap-and-trade bill through Congress, Mr. Obama has undertaken a systematic effort to regulate pollution through the existing Clean Air Act, advancing new rules on emissions from cars and trucks, power plants and oil and gas wells.

Mr. Obama has also laid out an ambitious overall emissions-cutting goal for the United States ahead of a United Nations climate conference in December in Paris, and is expected by the end of the month to release his detailed plan for reaching those targets.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/us/politics/obama-order-to-cut-federal-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama during a meeting on climate change policy at the Department of Energy in Washington on Thursday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Obama pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal buildings;
Executive order proposes 40% decrease from 2008 levels within 10 yearsEnergy consumption from renewable sources is planned to increase by 30%

BYLINE: Tom McCarthy in New York

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 463 words

Barack Obama announced a plan on Thursday to reduce the federal government's greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2008 levels within the next 10 years.

The US president inspected solar panels on top of the Energy Department's headquarters to highlight an executive order that would also increase the share of electricity that the federal government uses from renewable sources to 30%, according to White House figures.

Comparable moves from Obama last year, including new emission caps for some power plants, drew the ire of anti-regulation Republicans, and the argument flared up again in November, when the president announced an agreement with China to reduce harmful emissions.

"Today, America once again is going to be leading by example," Obama said on Thursday. "These are ambitious goals, but we know they're achievable goals."

To hit the new targets, the government plans to reduce energy use in federal buildings; reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal fleets, in part by using more hybrid vehicles; and reduce water consumption in federal buildings.

The president was joined at the Energy Department by executives from major federal suppliers who had agreed to new green standards of their own. The suppliers, each of whom do more than $1bn a year in business with the government, included IBM, GE and defense contractors Honeywell and Northrop Grumman.

The federal government is the top energy consumer in the country, with 360,000 buildings, 650,000 fleet vehicles, and $445bn spent annually on goods and services, according to a White House fact sheet. The Obama administration anticipates that the new caps would reduce harmful emissions by 26m metric tonnes by 2025 from 2008 levels and save taxpayers up to $18bn.

Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, said the executive action was consistent with what he said was methodical action by the president to put new climate protections in place.

"Today's executive order was a smart move in many ways," Maibach said in an email. "There will be lots of public support for it, it will create demonstrable cost-savings, and it's great for the American businesses that are making a business of helping others save energy."

Asked about the role of government and industry in combatting climate change, US voters were most likely to say that corporations and industry should be doing more, according to polling last year by the George Mason center. Respondents also placed the onus for action on "citizens themselves" and Congress.

On the roof of the Energy Department headquarters, Obama viewed 66 solar panels installed in 2008, while the building's energy manager, Eric Haukdal, explained what he was looking at.

"They're actually very low-maintenance," Haukdal said.

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum;
Record low ice coverage this winter is caused by climate change and abnormally mild weather, scientists say

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 850 words

Arctic sea ice has hit a record low for its maximum extent in winter, which scientists said was a result of climate change and abnormal weather patterns.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) said on Thursday that at its peak the ice covered just over 14.5m sq km of the northern seas. This was 130,000 sq km smaller than the previous lowest maximum in 2011.

The peak occurred on 25 February, which the NSIDC's senior research scientist Ted Scambos said was "very early but not unprecedented".

Climate change is driving declining ice coverage in the Arctic, with a recent study finding it has also become significantly thinner, down 65% since 1975.

Scambos said northern oceans have progressively warmed because of climate change. This winter, the warmer seas combined with mild weather to create exceptionally poor conditions for the annual freeze.

"[The record low extent] is significant, in that it shows that the Arctic is being seriously impacted by our warming climate," said Scambos. "In general, sea ice retreat has proceeded faster than modelling expects in the Arctic, although models are catching up."

Bob Ward, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, said: "This is further evidence that global warming and its impacts have not stopped despite the inaccurate and misleading claims of climate change 'sceptics'.

"Over the past few weeks, there has been an increase in the amount of misinformation from climate change 'sceptics' in the UK and elsewhere which is intended to mislead the public and policy-makers into believing that the effects of global warming on the polar regions are absent or negligible."

The most pronounced deviation from the 1981-2010 average cover was in the Bering and Okhotsk seas in the northern Pacific. There, the ice edge was 100-200km further north than in a normal year.

After March the summer thaw will begin, with the ice retreating towards its summer minimum, which usually occurs in September. The summer ice cover in the Arctic is also on a long-term decline, although Scambos says a low winter maximum does not necessarily indicate a low minimum is on the way.

The loss of ice from the Arctic has raised questions over when the region will experience its first ice-free summer. Scambos said he expects the summer minimum to dip below 1m sq km (386,100 sq miles) within the next 15 years. At this stage, he said, the Arctic will be profoundly changed.

"A less than 1m sq km summer would mean that the north pole would be open water, that a broad seaway would exist north of Siberia and that major ecosystems and fauna would be severely impacted. My own guess is that we will reach this level around 2030."

The absence of sea ice and abnormally mild weather affects communities and wildlife in the Arctic circle, which are adapted to extreme conditions.

In Svalbard, Kim Holmén, the international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the fjords there remained unfrozen and instead of the normal snowfall the island experienced rain which froze when it hit the ground.

"Much of Svalbard is covered with ice on land, which is a fatal state for the reindeer. When the landscape is covered by ice they can't move around and they can't eat."

Too much ice on the land and none in the sea has also made life difficult for the 2,600 people who live on Svalbard.

"This iced landscape is miserable to travel across on your snowmobile and your skis," said Holmén. "We can't ride our snowmobiles across the fjord so there are places where people want to go that they can't go. We have had tragic events with avalanches. Living in Svalbard we've always had avalanches but we've had one casualty this winter. Some of the risks are changing because we have more icing events."

He said this type of weather is expected to become normal under a changing climate.

"This winter is an example of what we believe will become more common and has profound influence on the reindeer and the ptarmigan [a species of bird] and other creatures that roam the land," he said.

This week, on the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean, Alaska's Iditarod sled race was forced to shift its start 362km (225 miles) further north due to a lack of snow. This has only happened once before in the race's 43-year history, in 2003.

Meanwhile, the NSIDC said ice floes surrounding Antarctica reached a relatively high summer minimum on 20 February. The extent of ice was 1.38m sq km, the fourth largest on record. Antarctic sea ice has confounded some scientific modelling by growing in recent years. There are several theories why the extent of the ice is growing despite a general warming trend across the southern continent.

"This is a matter of considerable debate," said Scambos. "The important thing to say is that the Antarctic is most definitely seeing the effects of warming and circulation changes - it is participating in 'global warming' in its own way. There are several effects in play. Primarily it seems that increased strength in low-pressure areas near the Ross and Weddell seas are pushing ice outward from the continent."

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Amazon rainforest and Great Barrier Reef need better care, say scientists;
Research published in journal Science shows local protection of three world heritage sites is too weak and leaves them at risk of 'unfolding diaster'

BYLINE: Oliver Milman

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 735 words

The world's most prized ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, require stronger local management to reduce the enormous global threat posed by climate change, according to an international team of scientists.

In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers warned that localised pressures such as deforestation, nutrient pollution and poor water quality could exacerbate climate-driven challenges such as heatwaves and ocean acidification.

A study of three Unesco world heritage sites - the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef and the Doñana wetlands in Spain - found that "stewardship is at risk of failing", putting the ecosystems at greater risk of collapse due to climate change impacts.

"Despite the solid scientific basis for managing climate resilience in such ecosystems, failure to do so is putting globally important ecosystems at risk," the paper warned.

While Brazil has slowed the deforestation of the Amazon by 70% over the past decade, the Science paper said: "These successes are now being partially undermined by major infrastructure and natural resource extraction projects and by shifts in legislation."

These added pressures were likely to mount as the Amazon dealt with rising temperatures and dry spells driven by climate change, which could turn it into a drier, more fire-prone place that lost much of its biodiversity.

Climate change is the leading threat to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, although there are significant local issues such as overfishing, chemical pollution from agriculture and the dredging of the seabed to facilitate the expansion of ports.

Spain's Doñana wetlands are threatened by pollution and groundwater extraction for fruit growing and the tourism industry. The wetlands are considered one of the most important sites for waterfowl in Europe, as well as hosting a range of amphibians.

Researchers said local management at each of the world heritage sites was "worrisome" and risked compounding the effects of climate change.

"Poor local management makes an ecosystem less tolerant to climate change and erodes its capacity to keep functioning effectively," said the study's lead author, Marten Scheffer, an ecologist at Wageningen university in the Netherlands.

"Local management options are well understood and not too expensive. So there is really no excuse for countries to let this slip away, especially when it comes to ecosystems that are of vital importance for maintaining global biodiversity," he said.

Terry Hughes, another co-author of the paper, said the Great Barrier Reef was facing an "unfolding disaster" due to climate change and local pressures.

The reef has lost half of its coral cover in the past 30 years, is considered in "poor" and worsening condition by the Australian government and may be listed as "in danger" by Unesco's world heritage committee later this year.

"It's an easy exercise to document how pressures have increased over time - they look like the famous hockey stick," said Hughes, who is the director of the centre of excellence for coral reef studies at James Cook university in Queensland.

"Fishing pressure has gone up, the number of recreational boats in Queensland has just passed 250,000 and the population in the reef's catchment will double in the next 25 years, meaning more coastal development and more dredging.

"It's hard to reconcile the aspirations of coalmining in Australia to action on climate change. Australia has got itself a well-deserved reputation for dragging its feet on climate change and there's no greater indication of that than the handing out of 60-year coal licences. The stressors on the reef are intimately tied to the fossil fuel industry, given that the dredging is for coal ports.

"The northern and offshore reefs are still very pretty and help out the tourism industry but you need to go further to find a reef in decent condition than you did 30 years ago."

His co-author Scott Barrett, of Columbia university, said improved local management needed to be driven by the international community, as well as individual countries.

"These ecosystems are of value to the whole world, not only to the countries that have jurisdiction over them," he said.

"It may be necessary for other countries to bring pressure to bear on these 'host' countries or to offer them assistance, to ensure that these iconic ecosystems are protected for the benefit of all of humanity."

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Revealed: Gates Foundation's $1.4bn in fossil fuel investments;
Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent tax filing reveals huge investments in the world's biggest fossil fuel companies

BYLINE: Damian Carrington and Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1098 words

The charity run by Bill and Melinda Gates, who say the threat of climate change is so serious that immediate action is needed, held at least $1.4bn (£1bn) of investments in the world's biggest fossil fuel companies, according to a Guardian analysis of the charity's most recent tax filing in 2013.

The companies include BP, responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Anadarko Petroleum, which was recently forced to pay a $5bn environmental clean-up charge and Brazilian mining company Vale, voted the corporation with most "contempt for the environment and human rights" in the world clocking over 25,000 votes in the Public Eye annual awards.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Asset Trust is the world's largest charitable foundation, with an endowment of over $43bn, and has already given out $33bn in grants to health programmes around the world, including one that helped rid India of polio in 2014.

A Guardian campaign, launched on Monday and already backed by over 95,000 people is asking the Gates to sell their fossil fuel investments. It argues: "Your organisation has made a huge contribution to human progress... yet your investments in fossil fuels are putting this progress at great risk. It is morally and financially misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding and burning more oil, gas and coal."

Existing fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned if the world's governments are to fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C, but fossil fuel companies continue to spend billions on exploration. In addition to the climate risk, the Bank of England and others argue that fossil fuel assets may pose a "huge risk" to pension funds and other investors as they could be rendered worthless by action to slash carbon emissions.

A landmark report citing climate change published by the Lancet medical journal and University College London concluded that climate change is "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century".

In their annual letter in January, Bill and Melinda Gates wrote: "The long-term threat [of climate change] is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide."

The Guardian analysis of the Gates endowment revealed investments in 35 of the top 200 companies as ranked by the carbon held in their reserves. These included coal giants Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Glencore Xstrata and Peabody Energy, the oil majors Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total and Brazilian oil company Petrobras, currently embroiled in a corruption scandal.

"This is very shocking. I never knew that they had so much of this kind of investment," said Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian activist who received the Right Livelihood Award in 2010 for "revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production" in the Niger delta where many oil majors operate. "If this is a charity that really care about the health of the people, they ought not to be investing in fossil fuel industries. They should pull back their resources from this sector completely."

Bill McKibben, who leads the fast-growing Go Fossil Free campaign, said: "The Gates Foundation has worked so hard to grapple with global poverty. But at the same time they're investing in the same companies that drive climate change, which endless studies now show is one of the key factors behind... global poverty. The developing world deserves better than this kind of tunnel vision."

He said: "The great industrial fortune of the 20th century, the Rockefeller oil legacy, has begun aggressively divesting from fossil fuel, arguing explicitly that climate change undermines its philanthropy for a better world. It's time for the great technological fortune of the 21st century to do likewise."

Prof Hugh Montgomery, a medical doctor at University College London and one of the authors of the UCL/Lancet study said: "I am backing the Guardian divestment campaign because I support the Gates Foundation and am a great fan of their work. I just want to help them to do more good."

A spokesman for Bill Gates's private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation declined to comment on fossil fuel divestment and said all investment decisions were taken by a separate entity, the Asset Trust, which manages the endowment but never makes public comments.

However, the Gates's charity has a track record of divestment from other sectors, having sold companies linked to the conflict in Sudan and banned tobacco investments. It also sold its stake in a security company G4S, following controversy over its prison contracts in Israel.

The Gates charity investment policy states: "When instructing the investment managers, Bill and Melinda consider issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation's work. They have defined areas in which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find egregious. Bill and Melinda regularly re-assess the endowment's holdings."

In recent months, the Gates charity sold off its huge stake in ExxonMobil for $766m, which has in the past funded climate change deniers and now argues it is "highly unlikely " that international action on global warming will stop it selling oil and gas "far into the future". No reason was given and it is unknown whether new fossil fuel investments have been bought.

"At this critical moment in time, if you own fossil fuels, you own climate change," said Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the $168m Wallace Global Fund, which has fully divested from fossil fuels and now invests in renewables and energy efficiency.

She has worked with many of the 75 other philanthropic organisations that have followed suit. "At a minimum, our investments should not be driving the problems we ask our grantees to solve. And those who acted early avoided the collapse of coal and oil prices. They were rewarded with strong financial returns: doing well while doing good."

Dorsey said fossil fuel divestment by the Gates charity would be a huge boost for the fight against climate change: "For a foundation with such global prominence to lend its full weight - with grants and investments combined - would be game changing."

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate and Health Council back Guardian fossil fuel campaign;
Coalition of health practitioners describes the Wellcome Trust's investments in fossil fuels as a 'dereliction of duty'Sign the petition asking the world's largest charitable foundations to divest from fossil fuels

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 462 words

The Climate and Health Council have backed the Guardian's Keep it in the Ground campaign urging the world's largest two charitable foundations to divest from fossil fuels.

The Climate and Health Council is an international coalition of health practitioners taking action on climate change. Members who sit on its executive board include Dr Fiona Godlee, the Editor of the BMJ, Dr David Pencheon OBE, Director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and Professor Hugh Montgomery, Director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance.

Speaking on Thursday in support of the petition to the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, co-chair Dr Robin Stott said:

We are overjoyed that the Guardian and its readers have started this campaign. We believe that all health organisations need to show leadership in divesting from fossil fuels - on both moral and financial grounds.

The Climate and Health Council is part of a coalition of medical organisations that published a report in February urging the health sector to divest from fossil fuels. The report argued that health organisations, and in particular the Wellcome Trust, should divest on moral grounds, as they did previously with regards to the tobacco industry.

Last year, the coalition encouraged the British Medical Association, the representative body of doctors in the UK to commit to divestment, which later became the first health organisation in the world to do so.

Dr Stott described the Wellcome Trust's decision to maintain fossil fuel investments as "a dereliction of duty". He said:

The health impacts of their grants will become irrelevant if the world is immersed in a world devastated by climate change. Tobacco is extremely profitable and they won't invest in that on health grounds. We need to find a way of reducing carbon very quickly but we worry that there is undue influence on the direction of government policy. We saw exactly the same phenomenon with the tobacco industry and we think that the same merchants of doubt are creating similar problems here.

If you have an idea for our campaign or want your organisation to be involved, you can email us at keep.it@theguardian.com

Want the inside story on Keep it in the Ground? Don't forget to download the latest podcast in "The Biggest Story in the World", our audio documentary series on the project behind the scenes. If you haven't yet signed the petition, you can join 94,000 people who have by signing here.

Are you a doctor, nurse, medical student or other health practitioner? Are you concerned about the health impacts of climate change? What should the sector be doing on the issue? Share your thoughts in the comments below and we will bring a selection above the line.

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Nearly one in 10 of Europe's wild bee species face extinction, says study;
First ever assessment of all Europe's 1,965 bee species finds them in dramatic decline, with intensive farming, insecticide use and climate change blamed

BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brussels

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 611 words

Europe's wild bee population is in dramatic decline with nearly one in 10 species facing the threat of extinction, according to the first ever assessment of all the continent's nearly 2,000 bee species.

Another 5.2% of bee species are likely to be threatened in the near future, while more than a quarter of species such as the European bumblebees are at risk of dying out, said the study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Population trends for 79% of the continent's pollinators - mostly wild honeybees - are still unknown, but over a third of bee populations for which data was collected were shown to be in decline.

"This report should be a wake up call to the ecological disaster that is unfolding in Europe's countryside," Ariel Brunner, the head of EU policy at Birdlife told the Guardian. "It's very clear that something is going horribly wrong with our agricultural practices which are the main driver of these declines, whether it is increased pesticide use, the destruction and conversion of grasslands, or the loss of natural vegetation and intensified farming methods."

The IUCN paper said that sources of food and forage for pollinators have been hit hard by intensive silage production at the expense of hay-cropping. The widespread use of insecticides and herbicides has also reduced the availability of flowers and promoted rank grassland, which is low in flowering plants and legume species.

Climate change has been another factor in the dip in bee numbers, the report said, because heavy rainfalls, droughts and increased temperatures can alter and reduce habitats that species have adapted to over many generations.

Of 1,965 bee species in Europe, the EU-funded paper found 9.2% were threatened with extinction, 12.6% of species were stable and 0.7% were increasing. But the peer-reviewed research by more than 40 experts was constrained by a lack of verifiable data, and the true number of bees at risk could be higher.

"This assessment is the best understanding we have had so far on wild bees in Europe," said Jean-Christophe Vié, the deputy director of IUCN's Global Species Programme. "However, our knowledge about them is incomplete as we are faced with an alarming lack of expertise and resources."

Bees play an essential role in sustaining ecosystems and pollinating crops and the IUCN is calling for urgent investment into new research on ways of reversing the decline.

The EU's environment commissioner Karmen Vella described the study's findings as "very worrying".

"Our quality of life - and our future - depends on the many services that nature provides for free," he said. "If we don't address the reasons behind this decline in wild bees, and act urgently to stop it, we could pay a very heavy price indeed ."

However, Brussels has been criticised for the application of measures to 'green' its Common Agricultural Policy, which were intended to make farmland management across all 28 EU states more sustainable.

"It is shocking that just a couple of weeks ago, the commission accepted a French implementation of this 'greening' which recognises maize monoculture as green," Brunner said. "Monoculture is about the most unfriendly thing you can do to biodiversity in general and pollinators in particular. In the name of greening the CAP, we are actively fomenting this crisis with public policies."

The annual value of global crop pollination by bees has been estimated at (EURO)153bn globally and (EURO)22bn in Europe.

More than a third of global agricultural volumes come from crops supported by bees, while 84% of crops grown for human consumption require insect pollination to enhance product quality and yields.

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Scientists shoot down Ted Cruz after attack on Nasa's Earth sciences mission;
Agency provides key data on volcanoes, algae growth and weather, but the Texas senator wants Nasa to focus on space exploration and drop climate change study

BYLINE: Tom McCarthy in New York

SECTION: SCIENCE

LENGTH: 964 words

Curtailing the Earth sciences mission of Nasa would deprive scientists of important data relating to volcanic eruptions, destructive algae growth, extreme weather events and much more, experts warned a week after a confrontation on Capitol Hill over the Nasa budget between Senator Ted Cruz and the agency director.

Related: Republican senator Ted Cruz to oversee Nasa in Congress

At a routine budget hearing, Cruz challenged Nasa's administrator, Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to explain why funding for the agency's Earth sciences mission had grown while funding for space exploration had shrunk.

"I would suggest that almost any American would agree that the core function of Nasa is to explore space," Cruz said. "I am concerned that Nasa in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission."

Bolden replied that a shift in emphasis away from manned space shuttle flights had produced savings in the area of exploration, but that in any case the observation and study of Earth was a central part of Nasa's core mission.

"It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment, because this is the only place we have to live," Bolden said. "We've got to take care of it. and the only way to take care of it is to know what's happening."

The exchange raised eyebrows in part because Cruz is a climate change skeptic, and his attack on Nasa's efforts to study the Earth, which it carries out primarily through satellite technology, was perceived as an attack on the ability to document climate change. Cruz's office did not reply to a request for comment.

But Cruz's position could be seen as merely an extension of previous Republican attempts to reduce Nasa's Earth sciences mission, which some have proposed should be shifted to another agency such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Marcia S Smith, founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com.

"It's not new, it's not something that Senator Cruz came up with," Smith said. "He's arguing what has been a Republican line for some time, which is that this should not be Nasa's responsibility, because Nasa's unique role is space exploration, so that should be its priority."

Top Earth and space scientists warned, however, that the particular exploration of earth that Nasa carries out with satellites could not readily be replicated by a different agency.

"Nasa is an agency that has incredible expertise in satellites and in getting satellites into space," said Margaret Leinen, vice-chancellor for marine sciences and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego. "And while Noaa does some of that, Nasa is the agency that, that's their bread-and-butter. They are the experts."

Leinen said Nasa satellites could observe deformations of the Earth on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis that could identify a seismic or volcanic event. "You can see how a volcano is bulging, and how dangerous it is," she said. "Whether it's moving or whether it's quiet. You can look at the major faults in Los Angeles and other places, and see the accumulation of stress.

"One of Nasa's satellites that looks at the oceans, called Aqua, has many different measuring instruments on it," Leinen continued. "One of them, for example, allows us to look at the concentration of phytoplankton in the ocean, and what kind of phytoplankton are there. And one of the things that that's used for is monitoring harmful algal blooms in coastal areas.

"It's another great example of a basic research satellite that's also doing work that's essential to protecting us from harm."

A Nasa satellite project allowed teams responding to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to track the movement of the oil into coastal waterways and monitor other impacts, according to a letter sent to Cruz by the American Geophysical Union, which represents 60,000 earth and space scientists.

The White House agreed in its latest budget request that Nasa's earth sciences program was critical, calling for a 10% jump to $1.9bn for the program for fiscal year 2016, out of $18.5bn total for the agency. As chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees Nasa, Cruz can hold oversight hearings and originate legislation shaping Nasa, Smith has pointed out, but Cruz does not hold the agency's purse strings, which belong to appropriations.

In any case, Cruz, for his general budget hawkishness, has not called for cuts to Nasa's space exploration mission. Legislators from Texas tend to like space exploration, for one very good reason named the Lyndon B Johnson space center, which sprawls over 1,600 acres just outside Houston (as in, " Houston, we've had a problem ").

Space exploration is "what inspires little boys and little girls across this country", Cruz said at last week's hearing. "It's what sets Nasa apart from any other agency, is the mission that has landed man on the moon, that has the potential to explore new worlds beyond our imagination."

Bolden, the Nasa administrator, replied that space exploration would not be possible if rising sea levels sank launchpads in coastal areas such as Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy space center goes underwater, and we don't know it," Bolden said. "That's understanding our environment."

Leinen said it was important for Congress to promote understanding of how and why Nasa looks at the Earth.

"What's concerning is that if people don't understand the value of the Earth sciences mission, it can lead to cuts down the line," she said. "It can lead to - in the same way that a misunderstanding in any part of life can lead to consequences - what's concerning is that this could lead to a misunderstanding within Congress about the importance of that valuable mission."

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Developed nations have sown the wind, Vanuatu has reaped the whirlwind;
As emissions alter weather patterns, island nations are the bellwethers that show what our future will be if we fail to tackle climate change

BYLINE: Andrew Simms

SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE

LENGTH: 808 words

When the president of Vanuatu said that years of progress had been wiped out by a single extreme weather event, it was both a warning and an echo. Hurricane Mitch did the same to Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998; and in 2005 political failure combined with the collapse of sea defences under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina to wreck the rich, vibrant culture of New Orleans. Climatic extremes in a warming world stand to reverse human progress and expose broken social contracts.

But in the case of Vanuatu there seems to be a crueller twist. Vanuatu is distinguished by having come top of a global index that measures how ecologically successful (low in impact) nations are at producing good lives for their people - so-called "happy life years". Vanuatu beat all other nations through treading lightest on the Earth for the quality and length of life its people enjoyed. Now it sits in the pathway of a giant climatic steamroller, fuelled by the energy-intensive lifestyles of nations much further down that index.

Its people are the national equivalent of the individual who leads an exemplary, healthy life only to suffer chronically due to someone else's bad habit - innocent, global victims of passive smoking. Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, was quick to point the finger of blame at manmade climate change for the severity of Cyclone Pam, saying that " the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ".

Many may think it's too soon to jump to such conclusions. For years cautious scientists have balked at attributing the effect of warming to individual events. Attribution can sometimes be hard to prove, either for methodological reasons of complexity or due to lack of data. While trepidation remains, things have changed rapidly. Instead of simple claims of cause and effect, climate scientists now readily discuss how the probability of any particular event has been raised by the existence of warming.

Hence joint work in 2011 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US and the UK's Met Office concluded that a Texas heatwave was 20 times more likely to be caused by climate change than by natural weather variation. A winter warm spell in Britain the same year was 62 times more likely than in the 1960s. The Met Office's Hadley Centre now confidently states that it "can identify any changed risk of such events".

In time, more analysis will be done on Cyclone Pam, but Lonsdale's personal experience and gut reaction fits a pattern of expectations described in the most recent and most comprehensive collation of science on extreme events in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. It concluded that: "The frequency of the most intense storms will more likely than not increase in some basins. More extreme precipitation near the centres of tropical cyclones making landfall is projected in North and Central America, east Africa, west, east, south and southeast Asia as well as in Australia and many Pacific islands."

So, while the present is pretty bad for Vanuatu, in a warming world the future looks set to worsen. For this island nation, that is bitterly ironic. Vanuatu is an archipelago in the western Pacific, famous for having no regular military. When it topped the index in 2006 its ecological footprint per person was no higher than those in non-industrialised countries like Mali and Swaziland, life expectancy matched that in Turkey, and life satisfaction levels were considered as high as New Zealand's. It is democratic, rich in natural wealth but, being remote, exports little, avoiding the scramble of competing in global markets. It is also hugely culturally diverse with more than 100 languages spoken across its islands.

Small island states tend to do very well in the index topped by Vanuatu. Over countless generations and in the face of geographical isolation, many Pacific islands developed more cooperative economies and highly resilient farming methods. In a warming world they are bellwethers, and carry lessons for us all. If climate change renders small island states unliveable, the international community will sooner or later have to learn to accept and support environmental refugees. Though this would be tragic, remote island populations can, at least, relocate. However, blue island-planet populations cannot.

We will seal our own fate if we fail to learn to share and live within our overall environmental thresholds. There is a long way to go. The World Bank recently tweeted that climate change exacerbates the risk of already costly disasters. It's a shame then, that as recently as 2012-13 the World Bank Group increased lending to $2.7bn for fossil fuel projects, including toward new oil and gas exploration.

It's one more reason why the Guardian's campaign for divestment from fossil fuels is so important. If you haven't signed it already, do so for Vanuatu.

LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

More than 10,000 people call on Dutch pension fund to divest from fossil fuels;
Petition to world's fifth largest pension, ABP, asks fund managers to drop oil, coal and gas holdings from £250bn portfolio

BYLINE: Emma Howard

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 423 words

More than 10,000 people have called on the fifth largest pension fund in the world to divest from oil, coal and gas. Members of the Dutch pension fund ABP handed over a petition to the fund's managers on Tuesday asking them to remove fossil fuel company holdings from its $360bn (£250bn) portfolio.

The campaign is part of a fast-growing movement, launched by the campaign group 350.org, that is putting pressure on institutions around the world to remove their investments from fossil fuels.

Around 60% of those who signed the petition to ABP currently hold their pension with the fund.

Vatan Hüzeir, co-ordinator of the ABP Fossil Free campaign which organised the petition, said: "We are very inspired by what Scandinavian pension funds are doing, such as AP2, AP4 GPFG and KLP. They all have decided to take climate change and the stranded assets scenario seriously and followed up their concerns with concrete action. It's now time for ABP to pick up the ball."

José Meijer, vice-chair of ABP, said: "These kind of initiatives are good, they keep us sharp. We are going to take a critical look at the influence our investments have on climate change and better communicate what we do."

KLP, Norway's largest private pension fund, divested from coal in 2014, while Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, recently divested from 50 coal companies.

In September 2014, the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4) announced they have joined forces with a coalition of investors and the United Nations Environment Programme to decarbonise the carbon footprint of $100bn of institutional investments worldwide.

On Monday, the Guardian launched a campaign asking the two largest charitable foundations in the world - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust - to move their investments out of fossil fuel companies. More than 88,000 people have signed the petition calling for the foundations to divest.

Introducing the campaign, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger wrote : "This [campaign] will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal."

Vatan Hüzeir said: "The Guardian's campaign has already inspired the media here to dedicate more of their work to climate change. We're all mere grains of sand, but together we can call a halt to climate change and introduce alternatives."

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Amazon's trees removed nearly a third less carbon in last decade - study;
Fall in amount of carbon absored by rainforest means even greater cuts to manmade emissions are needed to combat climate change, warn scientists

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 548 words

The amount of carbon the Amazon's remaining trees removed from the atmosphere fell by almost a third last decade, leading scientists to warn that manmade carbon emissions would need to be cut more deeply to tackle climate change.

Trees in untouched areas of the forest have been dying off across the basin at an increasing rate, found the study, published in Nature on Wednesday. Meanwhile the tree growth produced by higher CO2 levels in recent decades levelled off.

The authors said this may be because the Amazon's seasonal weather variation had become more extreme. They also suggested more CO2 in the atmosphere was, counterintuitively, leading to trees dying younger.

Dr Roel Brienen of Leeds University said the Amazon was responsible for one-fifth to one-quarter of carbon sequestered on land, so any decline in its efficiency as a carbon sink was of consequence to efforts to combat climate change.

"If this trend continues then that is worrying because that means that basically the subsidies that we have been getting from nature - the forests that are taking up part of the emissions that we have been putting out into the atmosphere - if that is going to stop then that means that we have to make even stronger cuts in our CO2 emissions in order to keep the rate of climate change as low as possible," he said.

Brienen said the declines were occurring in pristine forest areas and were not directly related to the overall deforestation of the Amazon caused by logging and mineral exploration. The study found the Amazon's overall ability to soak up CO2 dropped by 30% from the 1990s to the 2000s. During the same time, global CO2 emissions rose by 21%.

"We observed that these undisturbed forests over the last 20 years have been taking up carbon, acting as a CO2 sink, but the rate at which they are taking up carbon is decreasing over time," said Brienen.

The study is based on a continuous survey of trees at 321 sites across the Amazon over three decades. It found the growth rate stalled between 2000 and 2010, but more trees were dying every year.

Globally, vegetation is locking away more carbon as atmospheric CO2 levels rise. Plants are growing faster, fuelled by a more fertile atmosphere. But the Amazon is eschewing this trend.

Brienen said the growth in mortality could be the result of increased variability in the Amazonian climate. Two large droughts, in 2005 and 2010, caused mass tree die-offs.

But Brienen said the long-term trend of increasing mortality could not be explained by these isolated events. Overall the region is experiencing wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons. The unfamiliar patterns place the trees under increased stress, possibly affecting the health of the forest.

Brienen said the forests may also be experiencing an unanticipated consequence of higher CO2 levels. He suggests the accelerated growth is leading to trees dying younger. The dead trees decay, slowly releasing much of their stored carbon to the atmosphere.

The idea is consistent with a prediction by an Australian scientist in 2009 that the Amazon would lose much of its ability to absorb carbon as the air became more rich with it.

"Our study does indicate that there is a limit to the amount of carbon that forests can be taking up. Then that is truly worrying," said Brienen.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Scotland's carbon footprint grew 5.3% in a year, report finds;
Increasing reliance on imports has seen overall emissions rise, despite a fall in greenhouse gases produced by Scottish homes and businesses.

BYLINE: Owen Duffy

SECTION: UK NEWS

LENGTH: 614 words

Scotland's carbon footprint appears to be on the rise according to a report published by the Scottish government, with the growth in consumer spending pushing up the country's CO2 emissions.

The country generated overall emissions of 76.8m tonnes equivalent (mte) of CO2 in 2012, the study found, an increase of 5.3% on the previous year.

While the figures show a longer-term decline from a peak of 94.3mte CO2 in 2007, the recent increase is a blow to the Scottish Government, which has failed to meet its legally-binding emissions targets every year since they were introduced.

Today's figures account for greenhouse gas emissions produced within Scotland, but also include estimates of the environmental impact of goods and services consumed in the country, no matter where in the world they originate.

While emissions generated directly in Scotland fell 6.6% from 13.8 to 12.9mte CO2 between 1998 and 2012, the reduction has been offset by an increasing reliance on imports. Foreign sources represented 44% of Scotland's emissions in 2012.

Commenting on the figures, Friends of the Earth Scotland Director Dr Richard Dixon said:

An economy powered by excessive consumption drives dangerous climate change, but often the true scale of our impact is hidden. Almost everything that we buy has a carbon cost which measures the energy, materials and water that goes into producing it. We now buy so much stuff from overseas that the impact of these spending choices is just as important as the emissions we generate here at home.

He added that the increase in emissions seemed to be linked to Scotland's recovery from the global financial crisis.

As the economy has recovered our carbon footprint has shot up again by 5.3% in just one year. If we are serious about cutting our carbon footprint we need to buy less stuff, buy more locally, get help with making our homes more energy efficient and switch to public and active transport. Improving European product standards are helping but the Scottish Government needs to do more to make the low-carbon choices the easy ones, from transport to where we get our food and from insulating our homes to buying the right goods.

Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, echoed Dixon's concerns:

It's disappointing to see that Scotland's carbon footprint appears to be back on the rise. These figures are an important reminder that decisions taken here in Scotland result in greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Our carbon footprint is a one of the Scottish Government's national performance indicators and if it is to be turned round we need to see the Ministers use all their powers to help secure the low carbon economy Scotland needs and wants.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman emphasised that, in spite of the recent increase, the country had seen a reduction in emissions in the long term:

We are working hard to reduce Scotland's greenhouse gas footprint, and have seen a 6.3 per cent decrease since 1998 while our population has increased by almost five per cent over the same period. Although the Scottish Government is leading the way internationally with our transition to a low carbon economy, tackling climate change is not for governments alone - it needs everyone to play their part. Taking action to cut waste and use resources more efficiently can help Scottish businesses and households save money as well as reducing emissions, no matter where products are sourced.

The Scottish Government has committed to reducing Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions by 42% by the end of the decade. It has previously said that the country is on track to meet the target, despite repeatedly failing to achieve its annual reductions in CO2.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Fossil fuels are way more expensive than you think;
A new study estimates the costs of energy sources including their carbon and other air pollutants

BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1089 words

A new paper published in Climatic Change estimates that when we account for the pollution costs associated with our energy sources, gasoline costs an extra $3.80 per gallon, diesel an additional $4.80 per gallon, coal a further 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas another 11 cents per kilowatt-hour that we don't see in our fuel or energy bills.

The study was done by Drew Shindell, formerly of Nasa, now professor of climate sciences at Duke University, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. Shindell recently published research noting that aerosols and ozone have a bigger effect on the climate in the northern hemisphere, where humans produce more of those pollutants.

That research led Shindell to question current estimates of the true costs of our energy sources. Much research has gone into estimating the social cost of carbon, which attempts to account for the additional costs from burning fossil fuels via the climate damages their carbon pollution causes. However, this research doesn't account for the costs associated with other air pollutants released during fossil fuel combustion.

For example, depending on how much more we value a dollar today than in the future (a factor known as ' discount rate '), Shindell estimates carbon pollution costs us $32 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted in climate damages, and another $45 in additional climate-health impacts like malnutrition that aren't normally accounted for.

But Shindell also estimates that carbon emissions are relatively cheap compared to other fossil fuel air pollutants. For example, sulfur dioxide costs $42,000 per ton, and nitrous oxides $67,000 per ton! However, less of these other pollutants are released into the atmosphere during modern fossil fuel combustion.

Electric Cars Cheaper than Gasoline Powered

For an average American car (26 miles per gallon), Shindell estimates that the air pollution emissions altogether cost us $1700 in damages per year. In comparison, emissions from energy to power an electric Nissan Leaf would cost us $840 even if purely powered by coal, and $290 if fueled by electricity supplied entirely from natural gas. These costs would become negligible if the electricity came from renewable or nuclear power. Electric vehicles (EVs) are clearly the winners in this cost comparison.

Hence environmental damages are reduced substantially even if an EV is powered from coal-fired electricity, although they are much lower for other electricity sources

The Needed Energy Transition May Have Begun in 2014

The key conclusion from Shindell's study is that fossil fuels only seem cheap because their market prices don't reflect their true costs. In reality they are remarkably expensive for society, but taxpayers pick up most of those costs via climate damages and other health effects. Those who argue that we need to continue relying on fossil fuels - like former popular science writer Matt Ridley - just aren't accounting for the costs of pollution.

These air pollution costs are effectively a massive subsidy, and Shindell likely underestimated their size. When I asked Shindell if he had accounted for recent research by Moore & Diaz showing that climate change slows economic growth, he said,

I saw the Moore and Diaz paper, which was quite interesting, but after my paper had already been accepted so it didn't make it in there. Indeed if growth is slowed by climate change as in their study, the associated social costs could be much larger... But in general, this is only one of several possible reasons that my values are likely conservative as I've left out many things that I didn't know how to put a price on. That includes the influence of pollution on cognitive function decline, on IQ, and on mental health, the influence of energy on freshwater resources, on national security (e.g. military spending related to oil/gas supplies), the impact of climate change on biodiversity, the effects of ocean acidification, etc.

This research shows that we need to transition away from fossil fuels not just to mitigate the risks associated with climate change, but to reduce the economic and health impacts of air pollution in general. Fortunately there was some good news this week suggesting that we may be on our way to making this transition. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported,

global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector stalled in 2014, marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas that was not tied to an economic downturn... In the 40 years in which the IEA has been collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions, there have only been three times in which emissions have stood still or fallen compared to the previous year, and all were associated with global economic weakness: the early 1980's; 1992 and 2009. In 2014, however, the global economy expanded by 3%.

When we examine the data, 2014 indeed stands out. With 3% GDP growth, it's the first year on record that energy-related CO2 emissions didn't increase and GDP nevertheless grew by more than 2%.

The IEA reports that the stagnation in carbon pollution stemmed from a transition away from fossil fuels rather than a drop in energy use due to poor economic conditions, as had been the case in previous years where CO2 emissions didn't grow.

The IEA attributes the halt in emissions growth to changing patterns of energy consumption in China and OECD countries. In China, 2014 saw greater generation of electricity from renewable sources, such as hydropower, solar and wind, and less burning of coal. In OECD economies, recent efforts to promote more sustainable growth - including greater energy efficiency and more renewable energy - are producing the desired effect of decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions.

It's important not to over-interpret a single data point, but it's a promising sign that carbon pollution emissions didn't grow in 2014 while the global economy did. This is the sort of "decoupling" of GDP and CO2 that needs to happen for a successful transition away from fossil fuels. Signs that we may have reached peak coal production are also encouraging.

As Shindell's research shows, it's an important transition for us to make in order to preserve a livable climate and a healthy economy.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

The quiet revolution that's changing the way we use energy;
The unsung heroes of the fight against climate change are the entrepreneurs and politicians applying themselves to the task of changing our energy consumption

BYLINE: Bryony Worthington

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1005 words

There is a quiet revolution underway in the way we produce and consume energy.

This revolution has been kickstarted by laws, regulations and the arrival of new technologies. It's been influenced by people - no less passionate than those protesting on the streets - who've chosen to engage in the existing economic system to divert it toward more sustainable ends.

It's not glamorous, and can be slow and technical, but more people are applying themselves to the task internationally - and it is producing results.

This quiet revolution began in the UK in 1990 with the first regulations supporting renewable electricity. The rules obliging energy companies to support non-fossil-fuel-based electricity were originally conceived to support nuclear power after privatisation, with renewable sources such as wind power added subsequently. Twenty-five years and a couple of policy re-designs later, including significantly the Climate Change Act passed by Ed Miliband, the UK has a renewables sector which, though still dependent on subsidies, is starting to make serious in-roads into conventional energy systems.

The renewables sector contains many big players using the capitalist system to increase their market share and push out incumbents. It is attracting criticism from those with vested interests and is thwarted on occasion by members of what author Naomi Klein refers to as "blockadia " - people stopping things - but on the whole its continued growth looks certain. Costs have tumbled and the need for subsidies is receding.

In the UK, the Conservative party may bark about closing the door on renewables but even David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, can see that any private entities prepared to pour hard cash into concrete and steel, whatever its purpose, are incredibly valuable. If Labour wins the election in May we will set a target to almost fully decarbonise electricity generation by 2030.

Policies in support of renewables and energy efficiency, together with policies that make fossil fuels more expensive - such as applying air quality standards - are bringing emissions down fast in Europe. Of course two other factors - the financial crisis and warmer weather - have also contributed, but the signs are that as economic growth recovers, emissions are not returning.

Many of the regulations driving emissions down here are EU-wide, though in the UK our Climate Change Act and carbon taxation policy keep us slightly ahead.

The new European parliament and commission are embarking on a programme to create an "energy union " that has decarbonisation at its heart. The penny has finally dropped that low carbon can also mean low import dependency and increased security.

Different approaches are being tried in different countries with the UK looking to also invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS), and nuclear energy. Europe has always gained strength from countries diversely applying themselves to shared endeavours and this next industrial revolution will be no exception.

Outside Europe too, progress is being made in quiet, steady ways.

In China, pro-environment policymaking is on the increase and, for the first time last year, demand for coal appeared to have peaked as a result. A massive planned rollout of renewables, gas and nuclear energy looks very likely to continue the trend.

Realising renewable energy is the fastest technology to deploy, bar none, Narendra Modi is determined to electrify his nation using a policy to double India's coal tax and support renewables.

In Chile a new carbon tax is imminent but high energy prices and enormous amounts of sun are already making solar power profitable. South Korea has a cap and trade scheme that is a match for the EU's.

Even in the Middle East huge sums are being invested in all forms of zero carbon technology, nuclear and CCS included. A recent tender for new capacity in Dubai saw solar power undercutting conventional sources by a wide margin.

In North America, where the hijacking and paralysis of federal governments has led many to all but give up on national policy, state-level innovative policies continue to be introduced. The US Environmental Protection Agency is also overseeing a nationwide process to control emissions that stands a reasonable chance of being enacted if it can dodge the lawsuits. And for once the president is seriously engaged in trying to find a global solution.

It is these improved national conditions that give hope that a deal can be reached in Paris this year. It is easy to criticise the UN climate negotiations process and it is certainly far from perfect, but if there were a magic bullet it would have been discovered.

Climate change is a unique challenge and international politics is messy. The negotiations will only codify what countries believe to be possible today but, over time, ambitions will increase as confidence grows. What really needs to be achieved is an inclusive deal that boosts confidence in the revolution already underway.

A huge proportion of fossil fuels will remain unburned because many of the tools we need to make this happen have been created and are being improved.

They need to be applied more widely and with more ambition but it is already clear that we can, and do, drive capitalism in the directions we choose. Public pressure helps make this happen but so too do individuals working within the current system to divert its course.

It's been said that human beings are somehow wired to ignore climate change, but the human brain is the ultimate problem-solving device. Like a brain, as more people are added to the network, with quicker connections between them, the solution-seeking parts of society will become more effective. A few will ignore the signs of harm and pursue profits unencumbered by a conscience, but they will be outnumbered.

Those wanting to help increase the pace of change can take to the streets demanding action but, in between the protests, they can dedicate their time, skills and money to improving the tools of change: laws and technology.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Tidal power scheme to be unveiled in 2015 budget;
World first proposed for Swansea Bay could increase government's green credentials but chancellor is also offering subsidy for North Sea oil firms

BYLINE: Terry Macalister

SECTION: POLITICS

LENGTH: 843 words

George Osborne will use the budget to unveil an ambitious and costly plan to build the world's first tidal lagoon to generate green energy.

The move comes alongside controversial measures to lower taxes for North Sea oil schemes in a bid to stem plummeting levels of UK oil exploration and production.

The government will announce on Wednesday that it is entering formal negotiations on funding a £1bn project to produce electricity from turbines in Swansea Bay, south Wales.

The Tidal Lagoon Power company will be offered the chance to discuss subsidies similar to the " contracts for difference " used on the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset.

However, the project, which has the initial support of some environmental groups, is likely to generate its own concerns because it will need a subsidy of about £150 per megawatt hour (MWh) - compared with the £98 agreed for Hinkley and wholesale electricity prices of £50 per MWh.

Related: Budget 2015: what we know already and what we can expect

The final cost will depend on a range of factors, but proponents appear to have convinced the Department of Energy and Climate Change that if they can successfully build a prototype in south Wales, they will be able to roll out the concept much more cheaply at other locations as part of an eventual £12bn programme.

The Swansea Bay scheme envisages an area of 4.4 sq miles (11.5 sq km) cordoned off by a breakwater. It would have a generating capacity of 320MW with an annual output of 420GWh and a design life of 120 years.

Power would be generated as the incoming and outgoing tides - the daily equivalent of 100,000 Olympic swimming pools of water - passed through turbines.

The project would require a five-mile (9.5km) sea wall up to 20 metres high, but the Tidal Lagoon Power company says only a little more than half of this wall would be visible from land at low tide, with a few metres showing at high tide.

Osborne will also try to boost job and exploration prospects in the North Sea by changing the fiscal regime.

He is expected to introduce an investment allowance that could drive down taxes on some oil schemes from 60% to 30%. There are also hopes of a cut in the 30% supplementary tax charge on North Sea profits, which could reduce total taxes on some oil companies from 60% to 50% - still much higher than standard corporation tax.

Osborne used the autumn statement to make an initial cut to the North Sea supplementary charge - from 32% to 30% - but it was widely interpreted as being too little, too late.

There has been a huge drop in exploration off the Scottish coast, made worse by the halving of the oil price. Hundreds of jobs have been lost and there are fears that producing fields could be dismantled earlier than necessary.

Critics will argue that it is contradictory to cut offshore taxes as Britain tries to wean itself off fossil fuels to counter the effect of climate change. But the chancellor could point to the tidal lagoon plans as evidence of the government's commitment to green energy.

The wider tidal plans include four more, even larger, lagoons with an overall capacity of 7,300MW - enough to meet 10% of the UK's electricity needs.

The inclusion in the budget is a triumph for Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, who has been pushing the Swansea Bay project in the face of initial scepticism from Osborne and the Treasury.

Davey believes tidal lagoons can provide another leg to a clean energy strategy involving solar, offshore wind and nuclear together with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The tidal scheme is not certain to proceed. Even if the Swansea Bay scheme can secure firm funding, it will need planning permission. The application is with ministers and a decision is expected shortly.

An equally ambitious plan to build a Severn Barrage - linking the English and Welsh coasts - was debated for many years. There were concerns about the economic viability of the project as well as opposition during the planning phase from the RSPB wildlife charity and others. It was eventually halted.

Outlining the project for the first time last year, Mark Shorrock, Tidal Lagoon Power's founder and chief executive, said it was essential to build more than one tidal lagoon: "Economies of scale bring immediate advantage. A second lagoon will require a lower level of support than offshore wind, for a renewable power supply that is both long-lived and certain.

"A third lagoon will be competitive with the support received by new nuclear, but comes without the decommissioning costs and safety concerns."

Related: Should the UK be subsidising the world's first tidal lagoons?

A second project would cost £2.3bn and be based in Colwyn Bay, with a third costing £4bn and located in the upper Severn estuary. Two more at a cost of £4.5bn would follow, on as-yet-unspecified sites.

Upfront money is expected to be raised through infrastructure funds run by Macquarie Group and other pension funds. The long-term cost of the project, however, will eventually come from energy customers through household fuel bills.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre;
As global warming argument moves on to politics and business, Alan Rusbridger explains the thinking behind our major series on the climate crisis

BYLINE: Alan Rusbridger

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1457 words

Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden.

Famously, as a tribe, we are more interested in the man who bites a dog than the other way round. But even when a dog does plant its teeth in a man, there is at least something new to report, even if it is not very remarkable or important.

There may be other extraordinary and significant things happening - but they may be occurring too slowly or invisibly for the impatient tick-tock of the newsroom or to snatch the attention of a harassed reader on the way to work.

What is even more complex: there may be things that have yet to happen - stuff that cannot even be described as news on the grounds that news is stuff that has already happened. If it is not yet news - if it is in the realm of prediction, speculation and uncertainty - it is difficult for a news editor to cope with. Not her job.

For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth's climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers - and, to be fair, for most readers.

These events that have yet to materialise may dwarf anything journalists have had to cover over the past troubled century. There may be untold catastrophes, famines, floods, droughts, wars, migrations and sufferings just around the corner. But that is futurology, not news, so it is not going to force itself on any front page any time soon.

Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave a big red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?

The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.

One reason for this is personal. This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets once I no longer had the leadership of this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy.

Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.

So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian's best resources to describe what is happening and what - if we do nothing - is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as "incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community".

It is not that the Guardian has not ploughed considerable time, effort, knowledge, talent and money into reporting this story over many years. Four million unique visitors a month now come to the Guardian for our environmental coverage - provided, at its peak, by a team including seven environmental correspondents and editors as well as a team of 28 external specialists.

They, along with our science team, have done a wonderful job of writing about the changes to our atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, forests, food, coral reefs and species.

For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the sceptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.

The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet's remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.

There are three really simple numbers which explain this (and if you have even more appetite for the subject, read the excellent July 2012 Rolling Stone piece by the author and campaigner Bill McKibben, which - building on the work of the Carbon Tracker Initiative - first spelled them out).

2C : There is overwhelming agreement - from governments, corporations, NGOs, banks, scientists, you name it - that a rise in temperatures of more than 2C by the end of the century would lead to disastrous consequences for any kind of recognised global order. 565 gigatons: " Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below 2C," is how McKibben crisply puts it. Few dispute that this idea of a global " carbon budget " is broadly right. 2,795 gigatons: This is the amount of carbon dioxide that if they were burned would be released from the proven reserves of fossil fuel - ie the fuel we are planning to extract and use.

You do not need much of a grasp of maths to work out the implications. There are trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels currently underground which, for our safety, simply cannot be extracted and burned. All else is up for debate: that much is not.

Related: Gormley climate change artwork shown for first time in the Guardian

We need to keep it in the ground. This was the starting point for the group of journalists who met early in January to start considering how we would cover the issue.

But how?

Some will make the case for governmental action. Within nine months, the nations of the world will assemble in Paris, as they did previously in Copenhagen and Kyoto and numerous other summits now forgotten. Can they find the right actions and words, where they have failed before? It is certainly important that they feel the pressure to achieve real change.

Others will make the case for reducing the fossil fuel exposure of investment portfolios by decarbonisation. Or going further to full divestment from the most polluting fossil fuel extraction companies. Next week, McKibben will describe how the cause of divestment is moving rapidly from a fringe campaign to a mainstream concern for banks and fund managers.

It is now very much on the radar of the financial director rather than the social responsibility department. If most of these reserves are unburnable, they are asking, then what does that say about the true value of carbon-dependent companies? It is a question of fiduciary responsibility as much as a moral imperative.

We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues.

Related: Polly Toynbee: 'If you read the Guardian, join the Guardian'

In addition to words, images and films, we will be podcasting the series as we go along, to give some insight and transparency about our reporting and how we are framing and developing it.

We begin on Friday and on Monday with two extracts from the introduction to Naomi Klein's recent book, This Changes Everything. This has been chosen because it combines sweep, science, politics, economics, urgency and humanity. Antony Gormley, who has taken a deep interest in the climate threat, has contributed two artworks from his collection that have not been exhibited before - the first of many artists with whom we hope to collaborate over coming weeks.

Where does this leave you? I hope not feeling impotent and fearful.

Some of you may be marching in London on Saturday 7 March. As McKibben will argue next week, the fight for change is also full of opportunity and optimism. And we hope that many readers will find inspiration in our series to make their own contribution by applying pressure on their workplace, or pension fund, to move.

But, most of all, please read what we write. Real change can only follow from citizens informing themselves and applying pressure. To quote McKibben: "This fight, as it took me too long to figure out, was never going to be settled on the grounds of justice or reason. We won the argument, but that didn't matter: like most fights it was, and is, about power."

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Wellcome Trust sold off £94m ExxonMobil oil investment;
However, medical charity refuses to divest all fossil fuel assets and despite calling climate change 'one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health' just 0.9% of £3.5bn it awarded over five years went to climate change work

BYLINE: Damian Carrington

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 997 words

The Wellcome Trust has quietly sold off a $138m (£94m) investment in ExxonMobil, the oil giant which previously funded climate change denial, the Guardian can reveal. But the medical charity, which says "climate change is one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health", has refused to divest all its fossil fuel assets, as called for in a Guardian campaign launched on Monday.

Doctors and Wellcome Trust grant recipients labelled this stance contradictory and called for full divestment. The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) said health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change and that divestment by the Wellcome Trust would be in line with calls from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to cut such investments.

Existing fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned if the world's governments are to fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C, but coal, oil and gas companies continue to spend billions on exploration. The fast-growing divestment movement argues that fossil fuel investments are a threat to both the climate and investors, as action to combat climate change could render the fuel reserves worthless.

The Wellcome Trust is the world's second biggest non-governmental funder of medical research and is dedicated to improving global health, most recently leading the fight against the ebola epidemic in west Africa. It declines to reveal the full extent of its fossil fuel investments, but in 2014 its £18bn endowment included over £450m invested in the fossil fuel majors Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone.

The chair of Wellcome's board of governors, Sir William Castell, set out the Trust's position in a letter to the medical campaign group Medact in 2014: "The Wellcome Trust considers climate change to be one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health. We have made understanding the connections between environment, nutrition and health one of our five key research challenges."

But the Guardian can reveal just 0.9% of the £3.5bn given out by the Wellcome Trust over the last five years was dedicated to this key challenge. Castell is a former senior director of BP and chaired the oil company's safety committee at the time of the Deepwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."

Wellcome argues engaging with the fossil fuel companies it invests in "offers a better prospect for change than divestment", but it declines to give examples of its engagement.

A spokeswoman said Castell had no conflict of interest: "He has, and has had, no material interest that would exclude him from discussing wider investment policy in the energy sector." His directorship at BP ended in 2012.

"Climate change poses the single biggest threat to the health of humanity over the next few decades," said Dr David McCoy, director of Medact and a former NHS director of public health. "It is already causing deaths, ill health and suffering. The Wellcome Trust's acknowledgement that climate change is a very serious public health issue is contradicted by their investment policy. I am absolutely sure that within the Wellcome Trust and among their grant holders there are many, many people who want to divest from fossil fuels."

Dr Taavi Tillmann, at University College London and whose research into heart disease in eastern Europe is funded by the Wellcome Trust, said: "I really think the Wellcome Trust should divest from fossil fuels. It makes perfect sense, as health organisations have already divested from other sectors which are thought of as unethical, like tobacco."

"We take the precautionary principle very seriously in the health sector and the risk of climate change to health invokes that principle," Tillmann said. "We have the right and responsibility to invoke that principle, and to speak out and take action."

"The World Health Organisation is very much convinced that health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change," said Dr Maria Neira, the WHO's director of public health and the environment and a former health minister in Spain. "It is clear from the global perspective that we have to stimulate companies to disinvest from fossil fuels. Our secretary general Ban Ki-moon has been very strong on urging companies - and the Wellcome Trust could be one of those - to reduce their investments in fossil fuel."

In February, a coalition of medical groups including Medact issued a report arguing that the health sector, including the Wellcome Trust, should not be helping to fund the harm they exist to tackle. The British Medical Association, which represents UK doctors, voted to divest from fossil fuels in June 2014.

The Wellcome Trust is a "transparent" investor, according to Castell, but only publishes its 30 largest holdings in its annual reports. Its investment in ExxonMobil was revealed in regulatory filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed in January. The Wellcome Trust said the investment was sold in January, but did not give a reason.

Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors. Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's richest, revealed on Friday it had dumped over 50 coal companies.

Over 180 institutions around the world, including pension funds, cities, universities and faith groups, have already divested and the Go Fossil Free campaign received a significant boost on Sunday, when it received the support of the UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

There are ways to tackle climate change: now we must find the will

BYLINE: Letters

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 3878 words

· Thank you for your courageous advocacy for divesting and keeping fossil fuels in the ground (16 March). I proudly signed the 350.org and Guardian petition asking the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuel companies and freeze new investments.

Physics tells us that nothing happens unless energy is transferred from something to something else, but our use of fossil energy is rapidly disrupting the climate that sustains us. It is easy to envisage the necessary goal of a sustainable energy economy, but not how to reach it. The global energy system is huge, complex, resistant to change, and intimately woven into every aspect of our culture. Yet biofuels, solar, wind, and geothermal energy are available in superabundance, and the technologies for using them are waiting.

What holds us back is the greed and short-sightedness of energy companies and the politicians who do their will, and unease about the profound changes that will inevitably accompany a sustainable system. But think what some of those changes would be. An end to unremitting mining and drilling accidents, pipeline breaks and tanker spills, fiery explosions, ecosystem destruction, and the health problems attributable to producing and burning fossil fuels. Carol SteinhartMadison, Wisconsin, USA

· If we are to have a meaningful debate about climate change, then it is important to get the numbers right ( Crunching the numbers on carbon, 10 March ). The carbon dioxide allowance produced by the Carbon Tracker Initiative in 2011 was 565bn tonnes, an estimate that was said to provide an 80% chance of staying below 2C. In 2013 however, CTI revised its estimate upwards to 900bn tonnes to take account of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

For a 66% chance of staying below 2C, the IPCC calculated a total carbon budget of 1tn tonnes, but this is from the start of the industrial revolution and includes other greenhouse gases. As these account for 20% of global warming, the IPCC figure for burnable carbon was actually 800bn tonnes. We have already burnt 550bn tonnes, leaving only 250bn tonnes of carbon. Currently we are producing 36bn tonnes of CO2 a year, which is equivalent to 10bn tonnes of carbon, so we will burn through our carbon allowance by 2040, if emissions stay the same. In fact, they are increasing by 2-3% a year, so we actually have less than 20 years before we enter the territory of irreversible climate change. In this context, China does not plan on reducing its emissions until after 2030. Dr Robin Russell-JonesStoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

· The irony that Baldwin Lonsdale, president of Vanuatu, was attending a conference on disaster risk when his island country was hit by a terrible typhoon will be lost on no one ( Report, 17 March). Commonwealth governments and aid agencies should be in the forefront of relief and reconstruction.

With erratic climate events and sea-level rise it is time for the global community to take more seriously the growing risks for archipelagos, especially low-lying atoll states in the Pacific and Caribbean. In a single year a storm can knock 10% off GDP and certain communities are already being withdrawn from shorelines where ocean levels have risen. This is a particular challenge for the Commonwealth, where the Ramphal Institute estimates that there are some 10 independent and dependent territories which might be under water in 2100.

Winning support for serious analysis and advocacy, in conjunction with these countries, has proved difficult. Large donor agencies see the populations as too small - Vanuatu's is less than twice the size of the Isle of Wight's - and some of the governments fear that to draw attention to their vulnerability might damage investment in their tourism. But if no man is an island, no populated island country - especially one with a vote at the UN - should lie outside international concern. Instant relief is no substitute for long-term planning. Richard BourneTrusteeRamphal InstituteLondon

· As part of your campaign I urge you to focus on solutions - what people are already doing to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Take drought, an example close to home for me in northern California. What old and new technologies are available or could be developed to conserve water? Two high-school students developed a dew collector ; what has happened to this? Permaculture advocates suggest an old technology - clay ollas - as an irrigation system that can reuse grey water for plants; but there seem to be no manufacturers in the state. Some folks are developing grey water systems. Some cities are changing local ordnances to allow grey water use. How to bring composting toilets into more general use? What has happened to electric cars and really effective mass transport schemes? What are visionary individuals, community groups, cities and counties doing?

Of course, all this needs to be done on a huge scale at the systemic level, not just locally, but knowing more about solutions will inspire people to get involved in the changes that are needed. Gwyn KirkOakland, California, USA

· Gillian Caddick (Letters, 11 March) suggests it should be "mandatory for all new buildings to have solar panels". It should be mandatory for all new buildings to have enough insulation to be carbon neutral. Ross MartinWest Bridgford, Nottinghamshire

· You are campaigning against the symptoms and not the causes of environmental destruction. The causes are too many people (and no, this problem has not been solved: Africa and south-east Asia are likely to add another billion people every 20 years or so, unless we do something about it); consuming too many goods (how many people who have signed up for your climate change newsletter have bought a new smartphone, when their old one was still functioning?); flushing too many of our food nutrients into the oceans, rather than scavenging them from the city sewage systems to be returned to the world's cropping systems. That is where we should be focusing our efforts. Bruce DanckwertsChoma, Zambia

· One aspect hardly mentioned is the environmental impact of the number of tower blocks proposed for London, in addition to the present cacophony of those already ruining the skyline - the energy required and environmental cost of servicing these buildings, lifts, lighting, heating, computing back-up, sanitary provision and water, all creating a totally artificial environment which, in years to come will be viewed as a suicidal lack of foresight - and all in a flood plain of the Thames which already is stretching its flood defences to the limit. Diana HolbrookCanterbury, Kent

· Your editorial on food security " If the dreamers lose, we face a nightmare " (1 March) argues that when climate change really kicks in and the big heat arrives, it will be catastrophic - particularly hitting food security and water availability.

I agree that climate change is happening, and its impact will grow. But by focusing on new tools such as soil microbes we can begin to get ahead of climate change. As a scientist working to ensure that we can sustainably feed ourselves in a changing climate, I believe we have many potential helpers ready to assist us. They are beneficial soil microbes - billions of them.

They can be found in coastal Kenya where I was born, and in Alabama where I work as a microbiologist. Unlocking the secrets of soil microbes has the potential to protect crops from climate extremes while increasing productivity. Scientists have documented mutually beneficial associations between soil microbes and plants such as corn: improving their growth; enhancing their ability to tolerate drought and insect pests; and withstanding other challenges of a changing climate. In Colombia for example, beneficial microbes have been used to colonise cassava plants, leading to yield increases of 20%. Esther NgumbiDepartment of entomology and plant pathologyAuburn, Alabama, USA

· In 2012 John Crawford, a professor at the University of Sydney, discussed the issue of topsoil erosion. He noted that about 40 per cent of agricultural soils around the globe is currently classified as degraded or seriously degraded. Seriously degraded means that 70% of the topsoil (the layer of soil in which plants grow) has already disappeared. Fighting over whether or not climate change is real or whether manmade or not is irrelevant. The answer is to alter our agricultural practices in such a way as to return and confine organic matter and carbon in the soil. Soil is connected with so many things: health, the environment, food security, climate, water. For example agriculture is estimated to account for 70% of our freshwater use. If soil is not fit for purpose, that water will be wasted. Given the enormous potential for conflict over water in the next 20 years, it is ridiculous to keep degrading the soil at such a rate.

Restoring the water cycle in our environment - by sequestering carbon in our soil - will not only make our food supply more secure. It can also help moderate changes in climate. A mere 1% increase in organic soil carbon means an acre of land can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water. If water can be kept in the soil then that soil is supporting life. Kate TraversSutton, Cambridgeshire

· I have been an organic farmer for 30 years and can sympathise with the Quenault' s frustration (15 March) at the lack of government support for organic farming. The difficulty arises because organic farmers internalise costs and conventional farmers externalise theirs. For example who pays the cost of removing pesticides from the water supply? Not the farmers who put them there. The polluter doesn't pay.

This is the International year of the Soil and unless organic farming practices are adopted widely our most fundamental resource will be rapidly diminished by the monocultural, chemical-soaked, ecosystem-destroying globilised food system. Edward GoffOswestry, Shropshire

· This week President Obama told the US that, "No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change". Given the seriousness of the problem, and its impact upon us all, I am wondering when the election debate will focus on switching defence spending to combating our worst possible enemy. It isn't Russia. After all, increasing defence spending to 2% of GDP will not be of much use if there is nothing left to defend. Dave HepworthBakewell, Derbyshire

· I've just read the long reads by Bill McKibben and George Monbiot (10 and 11 March).The writers expose the activities of the fossil fuel developers, but don't mention the nuclear industries. Their activities result in plenty of carbon emissions if the whole cycle from uranium mining to waste disposal is considered. I've spent 15 years fighting against their intrusion into Northumberland and I've cycled through the villages next to Chernobyl, seeing how the locals creep under the boundary fence to collect berries and mushrooms which end up in markets in other countries.

All this speaking out against fossil fuels gives nuclear people an opportunity to paint themselves green, which is far from the case. There must be many others like me, who are 100% in favour of a renewables economy, and for whom nuclear will never be acceptable. Bridget GubbinsMorpeth, Northumberland

· George Monbiot eloquently spells out the powerful state of denial surrounding the issue of climate change - "the absence of official recognition of the role of fossil fuel production in causing climate change permits governments to pursue directly contradictory policies." Nowhere, in the UK is this more egregiously true than in Scotland where, in the "oil capital of Europe", Aberdeen, Ian Wood's government-sponsored review successfully achieved the Infrastructure Act, "maximising the economic recovery of petroleum from the UK's continental shelf".

This was music to the ears not only to billionaire owner of the Wood Group oil services company but also to the SNP government whose silence, already legendary in matters relating to investment in infrastructure and society, and that elusive 3% of tax raising powers gifted to them by UK government, could be seen as just another part of a nationwide "pattern of silence that surrounds our lives". Carolyn KirtonAberdeen

· If George Monbiot thinks his words are going to provide a clarion call to change the direction of climate actions, I fear he may have been to too many conferences. The core of the problem is even simpler than he has espoused: global economic activity is based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite and their use or replacement need not be included in the financial transaction.

The idea that we could convert natural resources to "wealth" without cost is clearly an attractive one and while world population was a few hundred million was even workable. Unfortunately, it no longer serves us and the climate is just one indicator of the unintended consequences it has produced.

The answer lies in the economy and how we account for our activity. Quite simply, the environment needs to become a cost in the calculation of profit. We need an economy that rewards activities that nourish the future rather than destroying it. Harold ForbesLondon

· George Monbiot's article highlighting the silence around restricting fossil fuel production made me thing about tradable energy quotas (TEQs). This idea has been around for 20 years and was dismissed in a government feasibility study in 2008 for being "ahead of it's time". They are essentially an annually contracting extraction budget, with a fair and workable distribution system. The TEQs scheme would guarantee that the UK's targeted carbon reductions are actually achieved, while ensuring fair shares of available energy." Anna Marie ByrneHuddersfield

· George Monbiot' s observationon the need to focus on control of fossil fuel production rather than output of emissions is spot on. The focus on emissions targets by successive British governments is indicative of the way in which we Brits do denial at an institutional level. Spurred on by the big consultancies such as Coopers & Lybrand, for over two decades now governance in the UK has become preoccupied with creating an "as if" reality, a virtual reality of targets and indicators which, through a collective act of self-deception, policymakers have come to believe is real.

Wherever you look, be it education, health or policing you see the same phenomenon, often with perverse consequences. Our policymakers have taken the same approach to climate change. As Monbiot said some years ago in his book Heat, "the thought that worries me most is this ... We will wish our governments to pretend to act ... They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed."

The demand to "keep it in the ground" takes the ground from underneath this endless game of organised denial. Paul HoggettChair, Climate Psychology AllianceBristol

· Duncan McLaren writes "Where is the justice in geoengineering" (14 March). But, having attended the Cambridge conference on the subject, I ponder "Where is the justice in not geoengineering?" If geoengineering can reduce the misery around the world as climate change bites, hurricanes grow in intensity, droughts lengthen, rivers flood, sea inundates, and crops fail, shouldn't we be geoengineering sooner rather than later?

Geoengineering is not an alternative to emissions reduction. In some cases, like cooling the Arctic to prevent meltdown, emissions reductions can have no significant effect and geoengineering is the only tool at our disposal with sufficient cooling power.

The real danger is leaving geoengineering too late; it may not be possible to bring back the sea ice once it is gone. Sea ice acts as a giant solar reflector and losing that reflective power would ensure that vast amounts of heat, more than the combined energy consumption of the human race, would collect in the Arctic. This in turn would ensure continued melting of the Greenland ice sheet, with the sea level rising up to a half metre per decade, and more.

So the urgent question is whether it is just and ethical to further delay the development and deployment of safe geoengineering techniques. John NissenChair, Arctic Methane Emergency GroupBath

· Contrary to your report on a solar powered plane, the aviation sector is neither the toughest sector to decarbonise nor will it take 35 years to fly clean. Zero carbon emission (non fossil) hydrocarbon fuels are with us. In the next few months the German firm Sunfire will complete a pilot plant in Dresden which will combine recycled carbon dioxide that has been separated from air with hydrogen that has been released from water using renewable electricity. The product will be "green" diesel for cars but exactly the same technology will make "green" kerosene jetfuel, though it will be more expensive than its fossil equivalent. What is needed to introduce this fuel is a commitment to an escalating carbon price together with regulation which will require flight to be gradually decarbonised. This is electrically powered flight by another means and it can be done now if we really want to do it. Leon Di Marco London

· I left university in 1962, keen to take up what looked like a promising career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority working on fusion power generation. At the time it looked quite imminent, with the press observing that electricity would soon be too cheap to meter.

Now, over 50 years later, we are arguably on the brink of viable controlled fusion power generation. Virtually zero carbon content and virtually unlimited fuel resource. Surely it is now that we need a much greater commitment of resources to achieving a goal so long striven after.

Electricity thus generated could become almost unlimited in supply and would easily supplant the use of fossil fuels for heating and surface transport. It could eventually reduce the requirement for other renewable sources. Ian KingWestbury on Severn, Gloucestershire

· Now the week of special articles on climate change is over, without any mention of the consequences of population growth (except for one brief letter), may I refer back to your editorial of 1 March: "Hunger is coming. The temperature rises." This mentioned that according to revised UN figures, "by 2100, the world could be home to 12 billion and still rising." Please, is it not blindingly obvious that a figure less than that would be beneficial? And please, since several countries have successfully reduced their fertility by means that are scarcely controversial (ie education, organisation of clinics and a properly supported distribution of contraceptives), why is it not done to discuss this at the very least?

Over 40% of all pregnancies are unintentional: 225 million women have no access to modern contraception. Sort those two problems out and we would be more than halfway to a stable world population: but if we keep fudging this subject, then we will indeed face famine on a worldwide scale, together with a wholesale destruction of nature. Roger PlentyStroud, Gloucestershire

· Although not every country is giving a high-priority to reducing and halting population growth, a great many are, often with great success and with very great benefits to their people. The benefits of family planning, in both the short and long term, are well evidenced. Aid-giving countries should not be deterred by the existence of governments with anti-contraception policies, like the Philippines, but should push aid through the many doors that are open.

According to the UN publication World Population Policies 2013, in the least-developed countries, the percentage of governments having policies to lower the rate of population growth has increased steadily in Africa since the mid-1970s, from 25 per cent in 1976 to 60 per cent in 1996 and 72 per cent in 2013. These are among the poorest countries in the world, whose governments have the least resources to put their policies into practical action, and therefore the most able to benefit from aid. Chris Padley Lincoln

· As a regional climate campaigner, I salute the Guardian for its big new push on climate change, the greatest moral challenge of our age. How strange then to note the relative lack of engagement by the Christian community.

Recall that Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Josephine Butler led veritable armies of believers into battle against the social evils of their day. More recently, black churches fought racism in the US and, as Madeleine Bunting noted: "The secret of Jubilee 2000's success [on poor country debt] is simple but unfashionable - it is the Christian churches."

These are people whose Scriptures command humanity to "care for the earth" (Genesis 2), and warn that the Almighty will "destroy those who destroy the earth" (Revelation). They are followers of the one who brought "good news to the poor" - whose protection is among their foremost responsibilities and who will be hit first and hardest by what is surely a crime against humanity surpassing all others.

Church leaders in the UK have generally said the right things, but I doubt if the subject gets so much of a mention in sermons and prayers from one year's end to another in most churches. And I don't get the impression that most believers ever spare a thought to the environmental impacts of their lifestyles. Could it be that we're good at charity, but lack commitment to justice? Or, worse, that our attachment to comfort and convenience now amounts to idolatry? Dr David GoldingWhitley Bay, Tyne and Wear

· The finite resources argument in relation to consumerism recalls RH Tawney's reference, in his public lectures 90 years ago, to the rejection of the attainment of material riches "as the supreme object of human endeavour and the final criterion of success." Today any suggestion that climate change requires the adoption of a simpler lifestyle in the west has no popular appeal. Notwithstanding the fact that Tawney was referring to incompatibility with Christ's teaching, I have found that even in the church talk of reduced consumption tends to evoke a horror stricken cry of "asceticism". We will have to wait for it to be forced upon us by natural disaster. Maurice VassieYork

· Waste is part of climate change and waste came thumping onto our doormat yet again this morning, this time in the form of two identical copies, each weighing 500gm and delivered by Royal Mail, of totally unwanted fashion brochures from Peter Hahn. There's nothing new to be said about advertisers who take absolutely no notice of requests to desist from sending unwanted literature, but is it beyond the wit of the law-makers to find a way to penalise - heavily - organisations that persistently and wilfully, through profligate and damaging mismanagement, cause waste? There must be millions of examples of this idiocy, millions of tons of wasted resources. Christopher Lucas Saxmundham, Suffolk

· I am a subscriber to the Guardian but even I can see that the best thing for the environment that you campaign so nobly for, is for you to stop publishing a physical daily newspaper entirely. Hugh HastingsFalmouth, Cornwall

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate change demands immense changes to the economic system

BYLINE: Letters

SECTION: SCIENCE

LENGTH: 2339 words

Mark Lynas says: "Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth" ( Save us from the miserabilists in the battle over climate change, 12 March).

This statement would have made much sense 35 years ago. The urgency for rapid action had not been established. But all this has changed. Whether or not the new "crisis" reinforces an ideological position on the left (despite splits over nuclear power and GM crops) leading to "an outright denialist position" on the right is now so much water under the bridge.

Immense changes to the economic system must be made over the next few years, and the blame game gets us nowhere. If Klein's belief that "corporate capitalism must be dismantled'" is wrong, it is up to the right to show how the new measures required can work under the present system. Governments should play a powerful role in facilitating compromises, where these can be made, and encouraging national debates on the basis of evidence rather than belief. David AndersonBingley, West Yorkshire

· It's people like Naomi Klein and the left generally who are responsible for runaway climate change because their policies for dealing with it are too radical, says Lynas. So they frighten all those fair-minded, reasonable people in the centre and on the right into not caring a fig about it.

Then the penny dropped. I realised Lynas was himself a Damascene convert, projecting all blame on to his erstwhile colleagues and comrades of "the left". The solution is staring us in the face: it is nuclear energy and GM crops. Funny, that's what big money has been telling (or selling) us all along. You don't have to be "anti-science" to suspect the alliance of money and power that the corporate world represents. Being suspicious of it seems a good, open-minded place to start. Richard KuperLondon

· Sound advice to non-tribal environmentalists from Mark Lynas: ignore both the flat-earth deniers and the eco-evangelists, and focus on good science, engineering, arithmetic and economics. If Keep it in the ground prompts a flight of capital away from fossil fuels and into clean, 21st-century energy solutions, we should investigage two constructive (and liquid) investment zones: small, modular, molten-salt reactors, being developed by the Canadians and the Chinese; and molten-metal, grid-level storage batteries, being piloted in Hawaii and Cape Cod. John McGrotherBuxton, Derbyshire

· Lynas uses the wrong end of the stick to beat the wrong dog. Since the mid-1960s the " war on science " has been waged against any change that might have an adverse impact on vested interest. It began with a campaign against the regulation of tobacco products, orchestrated by the marketing Company RJ Reynolds. This was followed by a war against the regulation of other health or environmental hazards reported by the scientific community, for instance, ozone depletion. State interference of any kind, including against the causes of acid rain, CFCs, greenhouse gases and secondhand smoke, was (and is still) seen as an attack on liberty, a dangerous step on the path to communism: "Environmentalists were like a watermelon, green on the outside, red within," Naomi Oreskes wrote in Merchants of Doubt (2010). Wiebina HeestermanBirmingham

· The scientific narrative has not been "captured by one, rather extreme, end of the political spectrum", but by global industries whose profits are threatened by the carbon bubble that will result if substantial fossil fuel deposits remain unexploited (the deniers) and by people who accept the scientific evidence but dwell on the apocalyptic image of a future world of runaway warming (the sensationalists). Apocalyptic images are exciting; they produce adrenalin, which is addictive. That is why disaster movies are big box-office. But this makes climate change just another spectacle. Lynas himself is a leading producer of this commodity in his books.

It is a bit rich, then, that he accuses Naomi Klein of pursuing an "ideological project", as if climate change could be anything else (but the right usually denies the politics of its own position). Klein has identified aspects of this late phase of global capitalism - the huge profits made from war and reconstruction, and the growth of a private security industry - that show it to be aggressively destructive.

Environmentalists do not have a monopoly on Enlightenment values - no one does - but when Lynas asserts that Klein makes environmental responsibility "politically toxic" he is insulting and, again, alarmist, which is another indication that he is a purveyor of the alienation to which he objects. He makes the debate a spectacle rather than a rational exchange. Professor Malcolm MilesTotnes, Devon

· The developing world's emergence from poverty is indeed non-negotiable. Climate chaos doesn't negotiate. But climate chaos is what will stop the developing world from acquiring, and the developed world from continuing to enjoy, unprecedented and lethal levels of material consumption. Our challenge is not to fantasise about technologies to save us from this future. It is to face it honestly, and start retrieving what we can. John FosterLancaster University

· Had Lynas attended the alternative people's summit at the COP 20 climate change talks in Lima last year, he would have heard a succession of speakers from Latin America's indigenous communities rejecting development models imposed on them by transnational capital. They are in the frontline of the fight against climate change and are struggling to stop the destruction of their environment by mining and mono-crop agriculture for export. They would not see themselves in terms of left or right, but fully understand that an economic model based on infinite growth, with the conmensurate depletion of the planet's natural resources, is incompatible with saving the Earth from the catastrophic effects of global warming.

This does not mean sufficient energy cannot be provided for the needs of future generations, but that it must be responsibly sourced and publicly owned instead of being left to market forces and monolithic corporations whose priorities lie in ripping off consumers and making money out of burning fossil fuels. As an energy trade union, we support the necessary, just transition to a low-carbon economy, and are members of the global network Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. As the slogan read in Lima: "Let's change the system - not the climate." Bert SchouwenburgInternational officer, GMB

· I went to the climate change march on Saturday 7 March expecting to be fired up. I came away disappointed. The issue, climate change, had been hijacked by multiple organisations pushing their own agendas - anti- nuclear, anti fracking, trade unions, political groups etc. Anyone viewing on TV would probably see several organisations they would not support.

Earth is not affected by politics, just by CO2 emissions. The climate change movement has to work from the bottom up to change the minds of people in every country, so as to cause each country's government to take action. Hugh BakerLeatherhead, Surrey

· I picked up a programme for the Edinburgh international science festival in the week that the Guardian ran its stark climate change cover features. I was surprised to note the low profile given in the brochure to the most pressing issue facing scientists, and humanity in general, until I looked at the sponsors page: Total, Scottish Gas, Senergy, Eon, Exxon Mobil, Cairn and half a dozen other fossil fuel extraction and provision companies are prominent. All the energy events, which mostly focus on technological responses, are directly sponsored by Eon. A typical example is a debate on "how much oil is really left in the North Sea and what its value is... supported by the Scottish Oil Club", the panel of which is entirely made up of oil industry representatives plus the shadow energy minister.

The National Gallery in London has attracted criticism for accepting BP sponsorship but at least there was no direct conflict of interest. Such financing makes a mockery of the objectivity the festival is designed to promote. Technological fixes are mostly a distraction from the urgent issue of drastically reducing emissions this decade, which extends beyond the boundaries of science. Climate scientists have attracted flak for not speaking out more. They have done their job. What about the scientists who are the crux of the fossil fuel industry, not to mention those who work directly in public engagement through events such as this festival? How can they be aware of the imminent catastrophe facing our planet and yet continue to facilitate it? Are their personal interests in their job not overridden by their personal interests in their future and that of their children? Andrew RubensEdinburgh

· Lynas's article does not do justice to the great campaign of concern the Guardian has embarked upon. By its very nature, climate change is an extreme situation that demands extreme measures. Now is not a time for fudging about, desperately trying to seek some kind of moderate consensus that has no hope of tackling this global threat. Does he really imagine that the rich and powerful will finally face up to what is already happening to us without an intensification of the international pressure for absolutely fundamental change to the way we live our lives? When have they ever given anything up without an enormous struggle?

The article could be read as some kind of PR appeal to take the debate back to square one on behalf of corporate interests. We have been discussing climate change for decades and, as Naomi Klein has said: "The only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them."

Just because billions of us have long since recognised the link between capitalism's insatiable appetite for growth and consumption and its catastrophic effects on our resources and climate doesn't make that analysis wrong. Nor is it the preserve of "lefties". Accepting the doubling or trebling of energy consumption by 2050 as a "hard reality" in a world that supposedly must continue to go on developing and expanding will not help anyone, nor will being an apologist for capitalism's excesses. Can he not see that we may be forced to accept a simpler life, which, paradoxically, may make us more content in the long term? Have we really got an alternative to this? Peter StrotherUpper Finlarig, Highland

· Campaigning on climate change should not be aligned to the left. The crucial element of change in British society is the small-C conservative. The anti-roads campaign of the 90s stopped hundreds of roads because local people, often Conservatives, came out to defend their countryside. My father-in-law, a staunch Labour supporter, worked closely with the local Tory mayor to deliver a superb children's playground and a community bus service in Lichfield. Our conservative MP spent hours on the phone to persuade the local council to allow a community garden.

However, the issue is not about left or right but about thinkers and doers. The small-C conservative wants to make it happen, not to have a discussion about "inclusive proposals" and "social consensus". Environmentalists tend to be good at attending general meetings about renewable energy but, when an application for a real wind turbine is before a council, they rarely engage. The green NGOs need to stop concentrating on attracting the thinkers and e-petition signers but also to engage apolitically with the rest of society on practical solutions with local councils, planning, communities and MPs. Victoria HarveyLeighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

· Lynas is spot-on. The triumph of ideology over scientific evidence hampers effective policy to slow down global warming. Opposition among greens to fracking is an outstanding example. Of course the location of fracking must take account of local geology and social factors, but the country that has recently done more than any other to slow global warning has been the United States, which has greatly reduced its carbon emissions by switching massively from coal to gas. It did so by unlocking vast reserves of shale gas through fracking.

The most urgent need in policy on climate change is to prevent the huge projected increase in the building of coal-fired power stations. Gas is still a fossil fuel and can be only a transitional solution. But its carbon impact is about half that of coal. It can give us a breathing space, more effectively and quickly than any alternative now on offer. We need time to develop the most effective long-term solutions to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Dick TaverneHouse of Lords

· Lynas assumes the classic sophist mantle, exposed by Socrates some centuries ago, but regularly recycled as the comfort-zone from which to launch any "plague on both your houses" diatribe when serious change threatens or is needed.

Characteristically, for him it is the left that is most at fault, because "the left's global doom threats ... have made the right embrace denialism" - rather than any long-term corporate commitment to poorly controlled carbon release. His acerbic parody of Naomi Klein's analysis and intention raises questions about his own motives and affiliations, and are a gratuitous insult to people around the world who are coming together to keep up the pressure on governments and corporations to clean up their acts before it is too late. The scientists are predominantly on their side, too.

Is Lynas's real fear that the difficult processes of coping with climate change, in so far as they achieve success, will trigger new, more insistent questions about how we allowed our world to degenerate to this extent, and how the causes may correlate with those of other issues - inequality, educational opportunity, economic malfunction and so on?

Given his apparent views, these could well be the real questions keeping him awake at night. Ralph WindleArts Social Action, Witney

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Six changes to fuel consumption that could combat global warming;
A new report shows how widespread adoption of low-carbon fuels could stall climate change

BYLINE: Oliver Balch

SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

LENGTH: 979 words

Low-carbon fuels - think biofuel, hydrogen and electricity - currently comprise a mere 3% of today's fuel mix. That needs to increase to 35% by 2050 if irreversible climate change is to be avoided, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The business-led sustainability group BSR, a global nonprofit that counts oil giants Shell, Chevron and ENI among its more than 250 members, is trying to map how such a transition could occur. In January, the organization released its recommendations for transitioning to low-carbon, sustainable fuels in order to prevent global warming from climbing past the critical 2C mark.

With energy companies sitting on 1,688bn barrels of oil reserves from the Arctic ice caps and Canada's tar sands, it won't be easy to push a transition forward. But the BSR-managed Future of Fuels coalition believes it's doable, assuming organizations take the right steps at the right time. So, what's the plan?

Related: The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming an overwhelming one | Alan Rusbridger

1. Get the trucks in the fast lane

Medium and heavy-duty vehicles make up just one in every 14 vehicles on the road, yet they account for more than 25% of road transportation fuel, according to the National Petroleum Institute's figures in the BSR report. Extend that to commercial vehicles of all kinds and the proportion jumps to 43%. This number isn't shrinking: a study commissioned by Exxon predicts that commercial vehicle demand will increase by 70% between now and 2040.

The conclusion: change won't happen without fleet operators and other major corporate fuel buyers getting onboard.

Fleet operators aren't deaf to such numbers, says Ryan Schuchard, associate director for BSR's climate change program. Nor are they clear what to do about them. "Fleet operators are all over the place," says Schuchard, who blames the mess on competing messages from scientists, activists and fuel providers. "Ultimately, we need a stronger and clearer voice from the users of these fuels that [sustainability] matters."

2. Make it viable

Despite huge advances in alternative fuels over recent years, commercial viability is still a long way off. Full commercialisation won't just happen - it requires massive investment, both in technology and infrastructure (think national networks of electric vehicle charging points, hydrogen filling stations and so on). Governments will have to pay up, but so too will the private sector - aided, most likely, by subsidies or other policy incentives.

3. Crunch the numbers

There are many knowledge gaps in the world of low-carbon fuels. Scientists, for example, are getting close to calculating the carbon intensity of different fuel types. But finding consensus (or even data) on the water, social or economic footprints of low-carbon fuels is hard. Those studies that have been done mostly exist in isolation. Alongside the need for hard science is the need for agreement around basic scientific parameters, Schuchard says. "There are so many different ways to think about the impacts of fuel. Direct or cumulative, probable or actual, objective or situational, chronic or acute: it's all a bit of a hodgepodge at present. The real challenge is to put these together into a unified framework."

4. Performance first

Proponents of various low-carbon fuels have plenty to say about why their fuel of choice is cheaper, betterand cleaner. Objective, performance-based data is what's missing. "We need to flip from companies thinking about the type of fuel they use to the performance criteria of the fuel," Schuchard says.

BSR hopes its proposed "fuel tool" will provide this. The tool, which is backed by Walmart, Coca Cola, UPS and PepsiCo, will aim to provide uniform lifecycle assessment information for all low-carbon fuels. It will start with carbon intensity, before expanding into other sustainability issues. A first iteration should be ready by the end of this year.

We need to flip from companies thinking about the type of fuel they use to the performance criteria of the fuel.

Ryan Schuchard

5. Everyone's a winner

Don't go betting on winners, BSR pleads. The last century might have been a one-horse petro-powered race, but the future is polyfuel. The rationale for a more diversified fuel mix is twofold. First, there's the so-called "locked in" problem: what if you throw all your eggs into the liquefied natural gas basket, only to watch an as-yet-unknown wonder fuel spring up?

Second, there are unintended consequences to consider. None of the current crop of low-carbon fuels is without question marks. For natural gas, it's methane leaks in production. For biofuels, it's land use. For electric, it's dirty power stations. These need to be ironed out before even thinking about which option might possibly win out.

6. Don't dawdle

As BSR's report makes clear, low-carbon fuel will only become a meaningful reality if systemic changes take place soon. The level of atmospheric carbon has already surpassed 400 parts per million. Exceed 450 parts per million and we're fried. Policymakers, scientists and businesses all have a role to play in preventing that.

Furthermore, overhauling today's fossil-fuel dependency is not a short-term game. But none of this should stop companies from acting now. Schuchard: "There are uncertainties, but not enough for us to delay."

As a recent BSR report clarifies, there are practical steps corporate fleet operators and truck operators can take. Establishing a fuel-sustainability policy is a starter. Accelerating low-carbon solutions through collaboration is another.

As for the laggards and naysayers? Tell them to go stick it in their tailpipes.

The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Ed Davey backs Guardian climate change campaign;
British pension and insurance funds should urgently consider divesting from coal and it's up to government to provide an incentive structure, says UK energy and climate change secretary

BYLINE: Terry Macalister

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1360 words

Pension and insurance funds should consider urgent divestment from "very risky" coal assets and then gradually retreat from oil and gas, Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate change secretary, has warned.

Throwing his weight behind the Guardian's "Keep it in the ground" campaign, he said a recent analysis which suggested 82% of coal reserves must remain untouched if temperature increases are to be kept below 2C - the widely accepted threshold for dangerous climate change - was "realistic".

Davey said it was not up to an energy minister to tell fund managers how to run their businesses, but added that it was vital to introduce regulatory transparency that would drive investors from fossil fuels to renewables.

"If you invest in a lot of coal assets you may be over-exposed but it is up to you to make that decision and for government to ensure the information is available. The 82%... is quite a number. It seems to me to be relatively realistic," he argued.

"We are going to need a lot of oil and gas over the next two or three decades but increasingly over time I think these oil and gas assets will look risky as the world makes climate change treaties, as it will do, as carbon pricing becomes more ubiquitous and companies cut down on fossil fuel use far, far quicker than you expect and therefore this argument is really, really significant."

On Monday, the Guardian launched a campaign asking the two largest charitable foundations in the world - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust - to move their investments out of fossil fuel companies. More than 72,000 people have signed the petition calling for the foundations to divest.

Introducing the campaign, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger wrote : "This [campaign] will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal."

Davey wrote in a comment piece, "I'm strongly backing the Guardian's campaign to raise the profile of the divestment debate ahead of the December climate change negotiations in Paris."

His support comes amid signs that British pension funds, banks and insurance companies have not changed their behaviour since a major report warned last year they were much more financially exposed than their European counterparts to overvalued or "stranded" fossil fuels.

And it comes as members of the European parliament in Brussels plan to establish a specialist group to campaign in favour of carbon divestment and demand new carbon reporting requirements.

Davey said investors such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, heirs to the Standard Oil fortunes, were already showing the way by divesting from coal and highly polluting oil or tar sands.

"Government cannot instruct these trillions of pounds and dollars that are in the control of private funds to move from x to y. What we can do is to put in place an incentive structure that will encourage people to think like that.

"Even modest swings out of fossil fuels into clean energy will have a dramatic effect. Carbon Tracker and Mark Carney [governor of the Bank of England] are not saying you cannot invest in fossil fuels but if you have a high level of disclosure it can be a game changer."

Asked whether it was compatible to issue these kinds of warnings and yet give short-term subsidies to keep coal plants open, support fracking and continue to give tax breaks to North Sea oil companies, Davey said coal had to be treated more urgently than oil or gas even though, for energy security reasons, the UK needed some coal-fired power plants for the very short term.

"I have been clear that coal assets are very risky but you are not going to get rid of cars and gas heating systems overnight and so we are going to need quite a lot of oil and gas. The question is would you like that to come from Russia and Qatar or locally where it is well regulated, gives us jobs and provides tax revenues."

Related: Britain can signal the beginning of the end for coal investment | Ed Davey

While the Bank of England is looking at the dangers of a carbon bubble, there is frustration that nothing has been heard from the European Central Bank on the same issue.

Reinhard Bütikofer, a Green MEP, said Europe's financial institutions were largely "asleep at the wheel" on this issue, in spite of numerous wake-up calls on the carbon bubble from stakeholders such as the the Bank of England.

Bütikofer and some of his colleagues are behind the establishment of a fossil fuel divestment group inside the European parliament.

They were also behind a report issued by the Green European Foundation, called Carbon Bubble: The Price of Doing Too Little Too Late published last year.

This report shows that a British pension funds such as the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme "stand out as the most vulnerable" across the European Union.

Current and former employees at British Airways and British Steel also have their pension investments more highly skewed towards coal, oil and gas investment than average, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Barclays Bank has a high share of outstanding corporate loans to companies involved in carbon activities while Lloyds Banking Group has a higher than average share of high-carbon equity and bond holdings.

The data and analysis concludes that up to (EURO)1tn of investments could be at risk from a sudden change to a low carbon economy triggered by a breakthrough in clean technology.

The carbon bubble refers to the overvaluation of fossil fuel reserves and related assets should the world meet its stated aim of limiting climate change.

The report points out that the objective of limiting any increase in the Earth's surface temperature to 2C makes it impossible to burn many of the reserves that have been found, leaving "stranded assets."

But the report says that equity, bond and credit exposures to companies holding fossil fuels are substantial across the European Union. It is estimated that pension funds hold up to (EURO)330bn (£238bn), banks (EURO)480bn and insurance firms (EURO)400bn.

"Such large figures raise serious concerns about the potential consequences of these investments if a large part of the oil, gas and coal reserves ends up stranded," argues the report, which was written by Profundo, a Dutch economic research consultancy, and partly funded by the European Parliament.

The overall impact of a carbon bubble is not seen as a likely source of systemic risk.

"However, in the case of continued economic fragility in the Eurozone, a carbon bubble shock would come on top of other causes of financial instability and would be more difficult to absorb."

The report highlights Britain as a particularly vulnerable country. "Although a precise ranking is not possible, analysis shows than many pension funds from the UK have a large exposure to the carbon bubble. These include the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and BAE Systems Pension Scheme."

The Profundo research describes the fact that 12% of the USS, is invested in high carbon assets as remarkable, especially as the further education fund itself warned in its own report back of 2001 about the risk of climate change to investors. By comparison, the pension fund for Shell oil employees has less than 6% of its assets in high-carbon investments.

USS said it had been looking at climate change as an investment issue for many years. The fund was already encouraging companies to improve their disclosures of carbon emissions and how they were managing climate risks. "In addition, since 2000 the fund has also committed approximately $300m in renewable energy, low carbon and clean tech investments."

Some energy companies are already taking steps to reduce their exposure to carbon.

E.ON, one of the big six power suppliers in the UK, is splitting its business into two. The current name will remain with a business that will be dedicated to renewable power.

The United Nations organisation in charge of global climate change talks said earlier this week it was lending its "moral authority" to the carbon divestment campaign.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: March 22, 2015

CORRECTION: A missing word resulted in a piece about climate change saying that limiting the Earth's surface temperature to 2C would make it impossible to burn many fossil fuel reserves, according to a report by the Green European Foundation. The threshold is a surface temperature increase of 2C ( Davey backs switch from coal to green investments, 18 March, page 1).

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Losing paradise: the people displaced by atomic bombs, and now climate change;
People in the Pacific Marshall Islands and Kiribati are facing oblivion as the sea around them rises, and they are already suffering from food shortages, droughts and floods. Karl Mathiesen reports from the frontline of climate crisis

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 2774 words

In 1946 an American commodore gathered Lirok Joash and her people together and asked them to temporarily leave their homes on Bikini Atoll. The US needed somewhere to test its atomic bombs. It would be, said the navy man, "for the good of mankind and to end all world wars".

Eight years later US scientists detonated Castle Bravo, the massive, bungled hydrogen bomb that would gouge a crater more than half a mile wide and make Bikini uninhabitable for decades, perhaps centuries. A calculating error created a blast equivalent to detonating 15 megatonnes of TNT, the bomb was the largest ever detonated by the United States - about 1,000 times larger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.

Joash was 20-years-old when she left Bikini. She has been forced to relocate by radiation or unsuitable living conditions five times - including a brief and disastrous return to a still radioactive Bikini in the 1970s. Now, at 89, she is the oldest of the Bikini population forced to move by the nuclear tests. Her memories of the atoll have now grown dim.

"I don't think she'll make it until the next return," says Joash's grandson Alson Kelen, a former mayor of the Bikinian council-in-exile. "I don't think I'll make it. I don't think my children or my grandchildren will make it. The dream that we would return already faded away a few years ago."

The Bikinians, most of whom will never see Bikini, live scattered across the Marshall Islands, a collection of 24 atolls in the Western Pacific. Joash, Kelen and 200 of their people now live on Ejit, a tiny low-lying islet set aside for the Bikinians near the Marshall Islands' capital atoll Majuro.

"We've been kicked around for a while, for the last almost 70 years," says Kelen. "And until now living in these tight communities here is the best we can get. And it's so sad. It's so sad. Because every time we look at this we feel like we're sailors on a voyage, we're still right in the middle of the ocean."

And the ocean, driven by climate change, is rising.

Across the Pacific, the subtle, unremitting first impacts of the climate crisis are already strangling lives. Later this year in Paris, the world's leaders will attempt to produce an agreement that will secure the global climate. But secure for whom?

Floods washed over Ejit three times in 2014. Kelen fears that before long, his people will be moving again.

"It's the same story. Nuclear time, we were relocated. Climate change, we will be relocated. It's the same harshness affecting us," he says.

In the Marshall Islands almost everyone lives within a few hundred metres of the sea and less than three metres above it. Inundations have destroyed homes and crops. Droughts of extraordinary intensity and length have necessitated food and water drops. Fresh water grows scarcer.

People are trying to defend their land by planting mangroves, and Sisyphean sea walls are built and rebuilt. But people's thoughts are turning from adaptation and resilience toward a climate exodus. Scientists predict that in 30 years, life here will be so uncomfortable most people will leave. A notion the Marshallese abhor. The Bikinian calamity serves as a national warning that homelands, once lost, cannot be replaced.

"If the land doesn't exist, what happens to these people for whom the land is the most integral thing? For the answer, just look at the Bikinians," says Jack Niedenthal, the liason officer for the Bikini Trust.

Marshallese foreign minister Tony de Brum, who has emerged as a champion of the global climate movement, says: "Displacement is not an option we relish or cherish and we will not operate on that basis. We will operate on the basis that we can in fact help to prevent this from happening."

But politics and atmospheric physics are running away from the Marshallese. In March 2014 almost 100 homes on the capital atoll Majuro were destroyed by a combination of high tide and big swell. More than 900 people were placed in shelters. Families have since returned to live in homes half collapsed into the sea.

"I can tell you right now that all of those [inundation] events that have occurred in the Marshall Islands can be attributed to sea level rise," says Reginald White, the director of the Marshall Islands National Weather Service. On the pancake flat atolls, three centimetres of sea level rise will cause a flood to spread inland a further 30 metres.

The higher sea level combines with seasonal high tides (known as king tides), large swells and high winds to push water on to the land. During La Niña years (part of the couple of ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that affects weather globally and includes El Niño) the seas can rise up to 30cm above normal. The last decade of predominantly La Niña conditions has offered a bleak curtain raiser for things to come.

"We are seeing more extreme events today than we used to see in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Even without La Niña we still receive inundations," says White.

Some scientists predict climate change will cause more intense and more frequent El Niño and La Niña events - although this is less certain than sea level rise. El Niño events are typically followed by dry periods in the Marshall Islands. During 2013, after a very weak El Niño, the northern atolls were hit by a severe drought. Food and water were delivered to desperate communities. Production of coconut oil, one of the countries only exports, fell by almost a third, a loss of close to US$2.5m (£1.6m) or 1.5% of GDP.

"If there is another drought then the industry will be gone. That will really effect everything here," says Mison Levai, the marketing manager of the national coconut oil producer Tobolar. This will not only be bad news for the 70 employees of Tobolar's refinery in Majuro. For the 20,000 people who live on the rural coconut-growing 'outer atolls' the equation is simple. No coconuts, no income.

On the outer atoll of Arno, families work together every day, six days a week, collecting fallen drupes, removing the husks, skilfully shucking the flesh (called copra) and drying it in makeshift ovens. It is then shipped to Majuro to be turned into oil and exported.

Torrak Anton, a copra farmer, uses a stick to scratch the arithmetic of his poverty in the dirt of the road. After food, rent and contributions to the copra dealer and island chief, he is left with $34 a week for the seven people in his household. During times of drought the coconuts shrink and the money for clothing, housing and education disappears.

Without copra, outer islanders will be reduced to a subsistence survival, eked from the land, supplemented by fishing and likely made impossible by tidal inundations. Already 1,200-1,400 people are reported to have moved from rural atolls to district centres - exacerbating overcrowding and making flooding in the capital Majuro more damaging.

Depending on how sharply the world cuts carbon emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) predicts the global mean sea level will rise by 26-82cm between now and 2100. The IPCC concluded in 2013 that even if the increasingly quixotic-looking "safe" limit of 2C of global warming were somehow achieved by the Paris talks, the sea would continue to wash over Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. What the rest of the world considers acceptable climate change is, quite simply, a disaster for atoll dwellers.

In spite of De Brum's refusal to countenance a national evacuation, White says the Marshall Islands are likely to become unliveable for all but a hardy few before the midway point of this century.

"What is the exact definition of habitable? It gets to a point where the extreme events become so frequent that it becomes very uncomfortable to make a good living," he says.

The people of Kiribati (pronounced Ki-ri-bas) are the Marshall Islands' fellows on the low road to climate oblivion. The capital atoll Tarawa is overcrowded and underdeveloped, even compared to Majuro. Rita Kaimwata, a 27-year-old mother of two (soon to be three), lives in a typical Kiribati home of driftwood, salvaged timber and palm thatching. Her tiny block of land in the village of Temwaiku is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a thin dirt road and a hump of sand less than a metre high.

Like many Tarawans, the Kaimwata's access to food and fresh water is tenuous. Their diet of rice and fish is supplemented by whatever vegetables they can grow. Every second day, for one hour, the government pumps treated drinking water and the family fill up a small tank. This precious water must be kept for keeping hydrated in the punishing equatorial heat.

For bathing, dishes, clothes and watering vegetables there is a well that taps the thin layer of fresh water (called a lens) a couple of metres below the ground. But last year (and again a few months ago) the sea swept over the road, through the Kaimwata's home, across their cabbages and into the well. Now nothing grows.

Set against scientific warnings of a future of catastrophic climate change events (such as typhoon Haiyan and hurricane Sandy ) the loss of a vegetable patch seems insignificant. But for Kaimwata's children the link between food, water and rising sea levels is profound and the margin between life and death could be as fine as the ability to grow a few cabbages.

Kaimwata, like many residents (called i-Kiribati), giggles to hide distress. "I laugh because sometimes we believe that in 20 or 30 years our country will be gone forever. But it's not funny." Devoid of rock and substantial natural defences, this is among the most marginal of all regular human habitats.

Nearly a decade of regular inundations has caused parts of Tarawa's already thin and polluted water lens to turn salty. Clean water is almost non-existent. Crops have died. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of malnourished multiplied eight times. In September, an outbreak of rotavirus from bad water infected 2,513 children under five years old. Seven were killed.

Kaimwata looks around at her children and her neighbours' children: "Only the children get sick. Many children die in Kiribati when they get the diarrhoea." More than a third of i-Kiribati are under 15.

The water situation is desperate. Water is being drawn from the freshwater lens 20% faster than rain replaces it. Bacteria from open defecation (there are few toilets), industrial and domestic chemicals and seawater contaminate all water sources - including the government supply. Only 60% of the atoll's population receive rations of 'clean' government water. The other 23,000 rely solely on well water that Tarawa's director of public health Patrick Timeon describes as "grossly unsafe".

"The enormity of water-associated disease and death has not been fully assessed," says Timeon, but the direct and indirect impacts are "colossal". He begs for assistance to raise just £70,000 for two desalination plants that could provide safe water to the entire population.

Kiribati's president Anote Tong is frank. Years of failed talks and prevarication by industrialised countries have shaken his belief in the UN process. The land, homes and futures of his people (like the Bikinians before them) have been deemed the price of doing business, the acceptable cost of delaying the end of the carbon economy. In contrast to De Brum, he is already working on encouraging his people to leave.

"If what will happen in Paris will deal with the case of the most vulnerable countries like us, then maybe we have some guarantee that we will be able to stay. But if we don't, I'm not going to put the future of my country on the outcome and the whims and wishes of those countries to decide. We've got to plan ahead. The old saying wish for the best but plan for the worst," he says.

The countries' contrary rhetoric on climate change is partly informed by their differing migration opportunities. The Marshallese have a compact of free association with the US, meaning they can resettle as they wish. But the i-Kiribati have few avenues of emigration. Tong's despairing statements are partly designed to goad Kiribati's major donor countries Australia and New Zealand to open their borders to his people.

His plan for the worst, encourages young people to learn a profession and 'migrate with dignity'. "We have to relocate people because the landmass is going to decline. That's common sense. Simple common sense ... I can say that I refuse to move, but that's being stupid isn't it? Because it will not be me that will be affected. It will be my grandchildren," he says.

Even now, it is not difficult to find the suffering grandchildren of Kiribati. Between Tong's modest parliament and Kaimwata's home is Tarawa's hospital. The overloaded facility desperately needs modernisation and expansion. People sleep on the floor or outside on the ground. Cats roam the wards and ants swarm around dripping taps. In a corner of the paediatrics wing, panting slowly in the heat, lies one-year-old Atanimatang Atanimatang.

He fell sick during the rotavirus outbreak in September and his little body has wrestled against the diarrhoea and fever caused by the virus for four months. He shows signs of kwashiorkor, a type of malnutrition commonly found in regions hit by famine. His mother Katewea Atanimatang watches her son's febrile sleep. They receive government water, she says, but when it is not available they are forced to drink from the well. She looks exhausted and sad.

When I contacted one of his nurses in the days before publication, Atanimatang had recovered slightly. He may yet live long enough to go to school, attend church, marry and have children - like most other i-Kiribati and Marshallese. But if he does, it's likely he'll also live to see his homeland evacuated.

The elders are distraught that this loss is being committed to their young. The Reverend Eria Maerierie is an old man. He won't live to see his country's loss. But he has a long enough memory to know that things have changed. If the tide is high on a Sunday he now conducts services in a church surrounded by water. And he rages against the apathy behind the rising sea.

"We are suffering in this part of the world from what those people in the rich world are working with gases. And its consequences fell on us in the Pacific. They have been selfish, thinking of what they can achieve with gas. What can we do? We just live with that dying feeling in our hearts. Our voice is nothing to them."

Will the atolls disappear?

The most widely-reported and possibly most misleading 'effect of climate change' in atoll nations is erosion. It's a striking, media-friendly narrative, climate change we can see. Homes undermined by rising seas, beaches scoured back to the coral shelf and coconut trees felled by salt poisoning. But the evidence showing a clear link between the last century of sea level rise and erosion is far from conclusive.

Research on the erosion of atolls really only began in 2011. The University of Aukland's Murray Ford has compared aerial photography from the second world war with current satellite images and the results may surprise some. Despite a small but significant sea level rise of 20cm last century, Ford found that the last half of the century saw a general (although not uniform) trend of accretion across 100 Pacific atolls. The islands are getting bigger.

"All the research that's come out in the last few years has shown that the islands aren't eroding away. It's kind of counter intuitive," says Ford. "The conventional models show that they should be eroding, but the current observations show that they aren't."

Rather than being the indisputable first effects of climate change, all the photos of dead palms and disappearing beaches attest to the extreme fragility of these landforms to change.

Related: Climate change in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, before and after - interactive

It is likely that on densely-populated Tarawa and Majuro, causeways, shoreline developments and dredging have much more influence on local erosion than sea level. Confirmation bias also plays a part in both the islanders' perceptions and the reporting from these islands. The eye isn't drawn so easily to the places where the sand is piling up. Any erosion is accepted as proof of the climate change narrative.

But just because the islands are growing now, doesn't mean they won't suddenly begin eroding when the sea reaches a certain height. At the moment though, the disappearance of land is less of a threat than the loss of habitable land, says Ford.

"The inundation risk continues to rise and it's highly likely that they'll be frequently inundated well before they are eroded away," he says.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Students occupy Oxford university in fossil fuel divestment protest;
University council says it needs to give further consideration to call from student's union to divest £2bn endowment fund from coal and tar sands

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 770 words

Students occupied an administrative building at Oxford university on Monday in protest at the university's decision to defer a decision on whether to dump its shares in fossil fuels.

Around 15 student activists peacefully occupied the Clarendon Building and unveiled a banner. One activist told the Guardian that two police vans and two squad cars arrived at the university. "There's lots of police around. They've put two security guards inside here with us," she said.

No attempt was made to remove the protesters and the security staff made no attempt to block the protesters from entering the building just as it closed for the day. Despite their stated intention to stay the night, the activists left the building at around 8pm.

John Clements, who was Oxford's director of finance until 2004, joined the sit in. He said: "We are bitterly disappointed about the university's failure to come to a decision. Oxford should be leading the move away from investment in all world-destroying fossil fuel companies to more sustainable forms of energy."

The protest was prompted by the university saying it needed to give thorough consideration to a campaign asking it to divest from fossil fuels.

A student union resolution in October called on the council to drop its shares in coal and tar sands companies and shift its investments towards low-carbon industries.

A statement released by the council on Monday said: "Last October's Oxford university student union resolution has raised an important and multi-faceted matter which requires thorough consideration. The university council had a good discussion of the issues and agreed to consider the matter further at a future meeting."

In response to the students' request, the university's Socially Responsible Investment Review Committee last year conducted an inquiry on the divestment of the university's £2bn endowment. Their report has not been made public. The council discussed the committee's recommendations on Monday morning and decided to hold off on making a decision.

Oxford student campaigner Ellen Gibson said she was "disappointed" by the decision. "Choosing not to act at a time when inactivity is an increasingly risky and unethical move. Avoidance of divestment by the University will not slow our campaign or indeed the pressing need for meaningful action on the climate crisis."

The students' two-year campaign has been supported by a broad coalition of voices within the university. Alumni, donors and staff have all called on the university to join other educational institutions, including Stanford and Glasgow, in the divestment movement.

Guardian journalist George Monbiot has told the university he will hand back his degree should they fail to divest.

"I think Oxford has a moral responsibility to stop procrastinating and to engage with this issue now. Climate change is the great moral question of our age, and ducking it, as Oxford seems inclined to do, is an insufficient response. It's a simple matter: does the university continue to invest in the destruction of the benign climatic conditions to which we owe almost everything, or doesn't it?" he said.

Solar entrepreneur and Oxford alumnus Jeremy Leggett, who has similarly vowed to return his degree, said: "I don't think universities should be training young people to craft a viable civilisation with one hand and bankroll its sabotage with the other."

The university's relationship with fossil fuel companies goes beyond its investments. Royal Dutch Shell funds a geoscience laboratory at the university, which investigates, and may assist with the extraction of, "unconventional hydrocarbons" (shale gas, shale oil, tight sands, clathrates and coal bed methane). Shell said it did not want to comment on the divestment decision.

Campaigners said the imperative to divest from fossil fuels goes beyond morality. Scientists say more than two thirds of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided. This means the companies that hold these reserves may be overvalued.

Oxford's own stranded assets programme identifies the fossil fuel campaign as the fastest growing divestment movement in history. A total of $50bn has been committed to move out of the industry as a result. High profile institutions to have committed to shift their money include the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the British Medical Association and the World Council of Churches.

Also on Monday, the Guardian launched its campaign calling on two of the world's biggest philanthropic funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to divest from fossil fuels.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign;
The Guardian is calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels. We explain here everything you need to know about the campaign and why we are doing it

BYLINE: Emma Howard and Damian Carrington

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 3365 words

What is the Guardian asking for?

We are calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to remove their investments from the top 200 fossil fuel companies and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within five years. We are also asking them to immediately freeze any new investments in these companies.

Who are the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust are respectively the largest and second largest charitable foundations in the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have provided billions in funding for global development, health and education. Their first project, which connected 99% of US libraries to the internet is now making similar progress in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. They have tackled the devastating effects of malaria and polio and funded the experimental vaccines working to wipe them out.

The Wellcome Trust exists to fund medical research. They have led the fight against ebola, pouring millions into experimental vaccines and rapid-response humanitarian research. They are also a major funder of research into potential treatments for cancer and new therapies that could restore the sight of millions.

Why is the Guardian targeting them with this campaign?

Both organisations rate climate change as a serious threat. In its Strategic Plan 2010-20, the Wellcome Trust states that: "Global health is under serious threat from the interlinked issues of access to nutrition, food security and climate change." It lists "Connecting environment, nutrition and health" as one of its five challenges.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation states that : "The foundation believes that climate change is a major issue facing all of us, particularly poor people in developing countries... many of our global health and development grants directly address problems that climate change creates or exacerbates."

It also says that its investments are not simply there to make money: "when instructing the investment managers, Bill and Melinda also consider other issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation's work. They have defined areas in which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find egregious. This is why the endowment does not invest in tobacco stocks."

Yet between them, these two foundations also have over $70bn (£47bn) worth of endowments, millions of which is funding exploration for new fossil fuel reserves. In 2013 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had invested at least $1bn of this in 35 of the top 200 carbon reserve companies, while in 2014 the Wellcome Trust had £564m invested in Shell, BP, Schlumberger, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone.

These investments are undoing much of the untold good work these organisations do.

What is divestment?

Divestment is the opposite of investment - it is the removal of your investment capital from stocks, bonds or funds. The global movement for fossil fuel divestment (sometimes also called disinvestment) is asking institutions to move their money out of oil, coal and gas companies for both moral and financial reasons. These institutions include universities, religious institutions, pension funds, local authorities and charitable foundations.

Related: Climate fight won't wait for Paris: vive la résistance

Evidence shows that proven fossil fuel reserves are more than three times higher than we can afford to burn in order to stay below the generally agreed threshold for dangerous climate change. Fossil fuel companies are currently banking on extracting these reserves and selling them - and are actively prospecting for more. By supporting these companies, investors not only continue to fund unsustainable business models that are bound to make climate change worse, but they also risk their financial assets becoming worthless if international agreements on climate change are met. These investments are creating a " carbon bubble " worth trillions of dollars based on assets that could prove to be unusable. The Bank of England is conducting an investigation into whether these over-valued assets could plunge the world into another economic crisis. Although the impact of divestment on share prices may be relatively small, the reputational damage can have serious financial consequences.

Since 2010, the movement for fossil fuel divestment, started by 350.org, has persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) to divest, with Stanford University in the US, Glasgow University in the UK and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund among the most notable.

It is the fastest growing divestment campaign in history and could cause significant damage to coal, gas and oil companies according to a study by Oxford University. Previous divestment campaigns have targeted the tobacco and gambling industries and companies funding the violence in Darfur. Divestment is perhaps most well known for its role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Has anyone divested from fossil fuels already?

More than 200 institutions, worth over $50bn (£33bn), have committed to divest from fossil fuels, including universities, local authorities, faith organisations and pension funds.

A coalition of philanthropic foundations, including the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune, started to pull out their investments last year, while cities divesting include San Francisco, Seattle and Oslo. The world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), recently revealed it had dropped 114 companies, including tar sands producers, on climate grounds. The World Council of Churches and the Quaker movement in Britain have made commitments not to invest in fossil fuels, but campaigns targeting the Church of England and the Vatican are ongoing.

In October 2014, Glasgow university became the first in Europe to make the commitment, with the University of Bedfordshire following close behind. In the US, the New School in New York is divesting while Stanford University has committed to remove its assets from coal companies.

What is the Guardian itself doing?

Guardian Media Group manages a fund of around £600m that supports the Guardian's journalism. This fund has holdings in fossil fuel companies. The board has begun a process to review these investments with a view to potential future divestment.

How do I get involved?

Sign the petition below to receive regular updates on the campaign. You can also follow updates on the Keep it in the Ground blog. You can find all of our ongoing news stories on Keep it in the Ground here.

What is the threat posed by climate change?

"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," said Barack Obama in January 2015.

2014 was the hottest year on record. 97% of scientific papers on climate change agree that the warming that has led to this peak was caused in large part by human activity.

No country will remain unaffected by climate change, but poorer areas of the globe are likely to be affected the most. Extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and intense storms are on the rise and will become normal. As sea levels rise, coastal cities and communities will will be more susceptible to flooding.

Diseases affected by temperature, such as malaria, will spread to new regions. Severe droughts will lead to food and water shortages - by as much as 50% by the end of the century, according to the World Bank. This could create billions of climate refugees, displaced by conflict triggered by these shortages. For example, a study by Columbia University argues that climate change was a key driver of the conflict in Syria.

The United Nations and climate negotiators representing governments around the world agree that in order to avoid dangerous climate change, the temperature of the planet must not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. According to the World Bank, without immediate concerted action, we are currently on track to reach this within two or three decades and to reach a 4C rise by the end of the century.

This, according to Prof Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is "incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community".

Why should we keep some fossil fuels in the ground?

The risk posed by today's fossil fuel industry to the climate comes down to simple arithmetic using just three numbers, or "doing the math', as campaigner Bill McKibben puts it.

The first number is 2C, the amount of global warming the world's governments have set as a limit. Beyond 2C, the world's scientists project "severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts" on people. The 2C number began life in 1995 as a round number that was useful in political negotiations. But since then scientists have warned that even 2C of warming will bring damaging impacts.

The second number is 565bn tonnes (gigatons or GT) of carbon dioxide, which scientists estimate is the maximum amount that can be produced by future fossil fuel burning if we are to have an 80% chance of keeping global warming under 2C. If you use a lower chance, say 50% or 66%, the amount of allowable CO2 gets a bit bigger.

But whatever the amount, they are all dwarfed by the third number. This is the total CO2 that would be released if today's proven reserves of coal, oil and gas are burned: 2,795 GT. That is the fossil fuel identified and ready to extract.

So here's the arithmetic. To stay under 2C, only 565 GT of CO2 can be emitted, but there is already 2,795 GT - fives times more - ready to burn.

This simple analysis has global implications. If climate change is to be tamed, most existing fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground.

What is the carbon bubble?

The " carbon bubble " is a term that has been used by regulators, financial companies and campaigners to describe the over valuation of stocks in coal, gas and oil reserves owned by fossil fuel companies around the world. If governments pursue international targets on carbon emissions in order to curb climate change, then between two-thirds and four-fifths of these reserves cannot be used, rendering them worthless. As fossil fuel companies are among the richest in the world these "stranded assets" have the potential to trigger a new global economic crisis if investors pull out in quick succession.

The carbon bubble could be inflating stocks worth trillions of dollars, according to a study published in 2013 by think-tank Carbon Tracker and economist Lord Nicholas Stern who authored a landmark 2006 report commissioned by Gordon Brown, then UK chancellor of the exchequer, into the economic consequences of climate change.

Shell has refuted the concept, predicting in a letter to its shareholders that fossil fuels would account for between 40% and 50% of the energy supply in 2050 and beyond. The Bank of England is currently conducting an investigation into the potential of a "carbon bubble" to damage the economy.

What is the carbon budget?

The carbon budget is the amount of greenhouse gas that can still be released into the atmosphere without exceeding dangerous levels of climate change - the 2C target agreed by international governments. In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put a figure on the carbon budget for the first time, announcing that the world burns through about 50bn tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. It is also very likely that more than 20% of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years after manmade emissions have stopped. This means that if we continue to emit at current levels, we will "spend" the carbon budget within 15 to 25 years. Given that we have already used two-thirds of the budget, the IPCC have urged governments to act quickly, using the carbon budget as the basis for international negotiations.

You don't seriously think you're going to bankrupt the oil, coal and gas companies do you?

No. Although the impact of divestment on share prices may be relatively small, the reputational damage can have serious financial consequences.

"Stigmatisation poses a far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies - any direct impacts of divestment pale in comparison." said Ben Caldecott, the author of a report on fossil fuel divestment published by the University of Oxford in October 2013. It said: "stigmatisation poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain. In every case we reviewed, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation."

Related: 10 myths about fossil fuel divestment put to the sword

Won't divestment from fossil fuels result in the end of modern civilisation?

It is true that most of today's energy, and many useful things such as plastics and fertilisers, come from fossil fuels. But the divestment campaign is not arguing for an end of all fossil fuel use starting tomorrow, with everyone heading back to caves to light a campfire. Instead it is arguing that the burning of fossil fuels at increasing rates is driving global warming, which is the actual threat to modern civilisation. Despite already having at least three times more proven reserves than the world's governments agree can be safely burned, fossil fuel companies are spending huge sums exploring for more. Looked at in that way, pulling investments from companies committed to throwing more fuel on the climate change fire makes sense.

Isn't divestment hypocritical because we all use fossil fuels?

Again, no-one is arguing for an overnight end to all fossil fuel use. Instead, the 350.org group which is leading the divestment campaign calls for investors to commit to selling off their coal, oil and gas investments over five years. Fossil fuel burning will continue after that too, but the point is to reverse today's upward trend of ever more carbon emissions into a downward trend of ever less carbon emissions. Furthermore, some of those backing a "divest-invest" strategy move money into the clean energy and energy efficiency sectors which have already begun driving the transition to a low-carbon world.

Isn't this just gesture politics rather than meaningful action?

The dumping of a few fossil few stocks makes no immediate difference at all to the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. But this entirely misses the point of divestment, which aims to remove the legitimacy of a fossil fuel industry whose current business model will lead to "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts on people. Divestment works by stigmatising, as pointed out in a report from Oxford University: "The outcome of the stigmatisation process poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies. Any direct impacts pale in comparison."

The "gesture politics" criticism also ignores the political power of the fossil fuel industry, which spent over $400m on lobbying and political donations in 2012 in the US alone. Undercutting that lobbying makes it easier for politicians to take action and the Oxford study showed that previous divestment campaigns - against apartheid South Africa, tobacco and Darfur - were all followed by restrictive new laws.

Those comparisons also highlight the moral dimension at the heart of the divestment campaign. Another dimension is warning investors that their fossil fuel assets may lose their value if climate change is tackled. Lastly, backing divestment does not mean giving up putting direct pressure on politicians to act or any other climate change campaign.

Won't the fossil fuel stocks be bought cheaply by others who care less about climate change?

They may do but the stocks being divested are too small to flood the market and cut share prices, so they won't be going cheap. Those who do purchase these stocks are prioritising short-term financial gain over long-term investment. As the president of the World Bank has said, an investment portfolio that recognises the financial risk of climate change is "acting in simple self-interest". More to the point, the strategy of the divestment movement is not to bankrupt the fossil fuel industry by the removal of shares but to cause reputational damage.

Is my own money invested in fossil fuels?

Highly likely. 350.orgprovide information on taking your own money out of fossil fuels. Most of the high street banks, including HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, have millions invested in fossil fuel companies. Most investment funds, including pension funds are heavily invested in fossil fuels and do not offer savers a fossil free option. ShareAction are currently running a campaign asking investment managers, pension providers and savings platforms to offer consumers a way to divest their own savings. They can support you to approach your own pension provider, while Move your Money are campaigning for banks to divest.

Where can I find more information about the divestment movement?

The global fossil fuel divestment campaign is a project started by 350.org, which is coordinating an international network of climate campaigns in 188 countries. You can find more information on their Fossil Free website about divestment, about campaigns in your local area or about starting your own campaign.

Can I donate to the campaign?

The Guardian is not seeking donations for its Keep it in the Ground campaign but if you want to donate to 350.org you can do so here. If you are based outside the UK, you can donate here.

I have an idea for the Guardian's campaign

We'd love to hear from you. Email us at keep.it@theguardian.com

Why is the Guardian doing this now?

You can read more about Alan Rusbridger's decision to put the climate crisis front and centre of the Guardian in 2015 here.

What have people said about fossil fuel divestment?

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England

The vast majority of reserves are unburnable,

Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, great-granddaughter of John D Rockefeller Sr, founder of Standard Oil

If you look back, when John D Rockefeller Sr got into the business, we got our oil from whales. His big breakthrough was to get oil out of the ground. The breakthrough now is going to be in clean energy. You should be there at the forefront. Those are the investors who are going to make the most money.

Jim Yong Kim, World Bank president, at Davos 2014

Rethink what fiduciary responsibility means in this changing world. It's simple self-interest. Every company, investor, and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change. We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities and cultural institutions to cut their ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Christiana Figures, UN climate chief

The pensions, life insurances and nest eggs of billions of ordinary people depend on the long-term security and stability of institutional investment funds... Climate change increasingly poses one of the biggest long-term threats to those investments and the wealth of the global economy.

Barack Obama

Science is science, and there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that's in the ground right now that the planet's going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire... We're not going to be able to burn it all.

Hank Paulson, former Treasury secretary for George Bush's administration and former CEO Goldman Sachs

Climate change is the challenge of our time. Each of us must recognise that the risks are personal. We've seen and felt the costs of underestimating the financial bubble. Let's not ignore the climate bubble.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

How companies make us forget we need to consume less to stop climate change;
We will have to consume less, not more, if we are serious about tackling climate change. So how do businesses like Coca-Cola lure us into forgetting that inconvenient truth?

BYLINE: Stephen Devlin

SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

LENGTH: 902 words

Recycle more, opt for "sustainable" products, offset your flights. In short, do anything, just please don't stop buying our product.

Companies know that most of us have a basic instinct to protect the environment. Some also know that our doing so could well be a serious threat to their business model. Why? Because a determined attempt to stave off climate change and resource depletion would require radical changes, not only to what we consume, but also - crucially - to how much we consume.

Here are four ways companies frame their marketing messages to make sure we keep buying their products despite our green instincts.

Related: Five ways that people frame climate change debates

1. The packaging pretence

For the easily convinced, it might be enough to do absolutely nothing other than colour the packaging green and employ environmentally-inspired language. Coca-Cola Life is a case in point: while clearly designed to engage environmental and natural values, nowhere does it claim to actually reduce planetary destruction. The ultimate natural beverage - tap water - isn't quite so profitable.

2. The not-so-green greener alternative

Statoil, the Norwegian energy company, wants you to think that natural gas will help solve climate change, ignoring the fact that we need to reduce the use of all fossil fuels. The NFU's Buy British campaign proclaims the superior welfare standards of British meat, but neglects the possibility that we ought to just stop eating so much of it.

Car manufacturers trumpet the improving fuel use per mile, but keep schtum about whether we might need a wholesale transition away from road transport. And easyJet implores you to " Fly greener, fly easyJet ", saying its fleet is newer and more energy-efficient, while disregarding the need to drastically reduce flight volumes.

In many cases, governments are complicit in this messaging, championing incremental changes as long as they don't encroach on our perceived right to consume as much as we like.

3. The feel-good factor

Recycling is the ultimate act of environmental absolution. When you ask people what they are personally doing to tackle climate change, the most common response is: "I recycle".

Related: Communicating sustainability is a subtle attempt at doing good

And yet, in environmental terms it is infinitely preferable to prevent waste altogether, rather than recycle it. Recycling alone is not going to do much to prevent disastrous climate change, but it makes people feel good and doesn't threaten core corporate interests.

Sometimes the attempt to co-opt sustainability frames is shameless: think back to Topshop's blatant rebranding of a popular slogan : 'Reshop. Reuse. Recycle.' Or Shell's ludicrous 2007 claim to recycle CO2 into flowers. Others are more subtle, like Jigsaw's current For Life Not Landfill campaign, which instructs you to "invest" in your wardrobe, but offers no serious advice on why buying more clothes from Jigsaw might reduce the number of garments in landfill sites.

4. There is no alternative

If all else fails, just tell your customers that they have no choice but to buy your product. Seriously unsustainable industries that can't hide their dirty practices are the most likely offenders here.

For example, fossil fuel companies are fond of reminding us that demand for their product will keepincreasing, and the food industry tells us we will need 100% more food by 2050. This framing sidelines the question of whether we should be trying to constrain that demand and implicitly tells you that since everyone else is going to be doing it, you might as well join the party.

The exception that proves the rule?

The outdoor equipment company Patagonia famously urged its customers not to buy their products if they didn't need them in their Don't Buy This Jacket campaign. Corporate framing is so deliberately devoid of anti-consumption messages that when one does crop up it feels completely jarring and causes a media splash.

A cynic might argue that Patagonia is, in fact, the supreme master of greenwash here, but, whatever Patagonia's aims, the campaign raised an interesting question: can retail brands ever be the ones to encourage truly sustainable practices?

Next steps

The current framing of climate change doesn't generally accept that there are some things we simply need to do less or consume fewer of. The story pushed by businesses and governments is that we need to fit the problem of climate change into the continuation of our normal lives and simply make better choices at the checkout.

Related: Growth is not the answer to inequality

In this narrative, the biggest change you might have to make is to buy British lamb chops, not ones from New Zealand, exchange your gas-guzzling car for a Prius and, above all, remember to do your recycling.

Ultimately, we can't expect businesses to advocate constraining consumption. But we must recognise the way they exploit our environmental instincts in their marketing. It's time we start questioning whether to buy, not just what to buy.

The rethinking prosperity hub is sponsored by DNV GL. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.

Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Climate change aggravating cyclone damage, scientists say;
Rising sea levels making island nations such as Vanuatu more vulnerable to storms and amplifies the impact of tropical cyclones

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 767 words

Scientists say the devastation caused by Pam, the most powerful cyclone to hit the South Pacific since records began, was aggravated by climate change. However, the effect the changing climate is having on tropical storms remains largely unresolved.

The president of Vanuatu told a conference in Japan on Monday that climate change had contributed to Pam's impact on his nation. There are reports that 90% of the buildings in the capital Port Vila have been destroyed or damaged after the cyclone hit over the weekend. Six people are reported to have been killed.

President Baldwin Lonsdale told delegates at a UN conference on disaster risk his people were being affected by more cyclones. He said this was a symptom of the climate crisis.

"We see the level of sea rise ... The cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected... This year we have more than in any year ... Yes, climate change is contributing to this."

Professor Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said the human contribution to sea level rise over the past 100 years was well documented and makes island nations more vulnerable to storms and particularly storm surge.

"When cyclones and other storms occur, there is already a greater risk of coastal flooding because the background sea level has risen, largely due to human-induced global warming. How much more flooding has occurred due to human action is unclear, but ongoing sea level rise can be expected to further increase this risk unless coastal protection can be improved."

Professor Myles Allen a climate scientist from the University of Oxford said while there is a suggestion cyclones may become more intense, the president's assertion that climate change was causing more storms was not supported by science.

"It is a perfectly reasonable question for the president to be raising. Basic thermodynamics means that a warmer atmosphere, all other things being equal, makes more intense cyclones possible," said Allen.

"But this does not mean cyclones have necessarily become more likely: indeed, the latest assessment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated explicitly that there is no clear evidence at present for any human-induced increase in tropic-wide cyclone frequency.

"On a personal level, I sympathise with the president's evident frustration: he and the people of Vanuatu deserve an authoritative answer to the question of the role of past greenhouse gas emissions in cyclone Pam. The science isn't there yet, but we are getting there."

By March it would be normal for around four cyclones to have formed in the South Pacific. But, as Lonsdale said on Monday, the 2015 season has been particularly bad. Six cyclones have hit the region since the beginning of the year.

Dr Pete Inness, a tropical meteorologist from Reading University, said it was impossible make any inference from a single season.

"It is a very active year, but a single active year doesn't in itself indicate a trend. There isn't apparently a long term trend."

In fact, he said, modelling expects cyclones in the South Pacific to shift southward and become 20-30% less frequent by the end of the century as a result of climate change.

"The things that control the number of cyclones are other things like the wind speeds at different levels in the atmosphere," he said. "There's really complicated changes projected to happen to the winds speeds in [the South Pacific], which, in concert to the changes in sea temperature, actually seem to indicate that we would expect fewer cyclones in this area in the next 50 to 100 years."

Dr Chris Holloway, a tropical storm expert at the University of Reading, said that while the total number of storms may reduce, the number of very intense storms, like Pam, may increase slightly.

"Tropical cyclone Pam had the strongest winds of any South Pacific tropical cyclone on record, and is tied for having the strongest winds of any southern hemisphere tropical cyclone on record.

"Globally it is most likely that the total number of tropical cyclones will decrease with climate change while the number of the most intense storms, like Pam, will increase."

Dr Ilan Kelman, reader in risk at University College London, said rising sea levels made it imperative that island states were supported in resilience building.

"We could have done much more to work with Vanuatu long before the cyclone struck in order to reduce the disaster potential. That is the point of this week's disaster risk reduction conference in Japan. A cyclone alone does not create a disaster unless we are not ready for it," he said.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

EU should start legal case over UK failure on energy-saving laws, say campaigners;
Campaigners say that the UK is the West Ham of carbon-cutting efforts after falling to 13 thplace in 'disturbing' new energy-saving league table

BYLINE: Arthur NeslenBrussels

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 629 words

Energy waste campaigners are calling for Brussels to file legal proceedings against the UK for flouting EU energy-saving laws, following new research by the AEA Ricardo consultancy.

Across Europe, the industry body the Coalition for Energy Savings says that a "disturbing" pattern of poor implementation has emerged from analysis of actions that EU states are taking to meet the bloc's energy efficiency goals.

An energy wastage league table the group has compiled shows the UK occupying 13 thplace out of 28 countries. While Britain is on equal points with Greece and the Netherlands, it is far below pace-setters such as Denmark (1 st) and Ireland (2 nd).

Crucially, it is accused of relying on measures such as an existing building code that predates the EU energy efficiency directive for around half of its CO2-saving efforts. On a bloc-wide basis these measures are supposed to help prevent the equivalent of 94 million tonnes of oil from being burned by 2020.

"Only half of what the UK has done so far is eligible," Stefan Scheuer, the coalition's secretary-general told the Guardian. "It is a clear case for the commission to start an investigation with a view to launching an infringement proceeding against the UK for a bad application of EU legislation."

Brook Riley, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe added: "The UK is in danger of becoming the West Ham of European energy efficiency [middle of the table], when it should be aiming for the Champions League."

A government spokesman insisted that the new research did not call into question the UK's ability to meet EU energy efficiency targets. "We have a strong track record on energy demand reduction and are recognised as a global leader in this area," the spokesman said.

But the UK has been accused of bad behaviour over the directive before, having played hard ball in negotiations to get an exemption from its binding annual 1.5% energy saving obligation. Before signing up, British negotiators also insisted on a 'banking and borrowing' clause that allowed them to count measures taken four years before and three years after the directive's 2014-2020 remit.

This time, while Germany has lowered its energy savings obligations target, the UK has raised it by 7%. But the coalition analysis indicates this will likely be met by 'double counting' savings from the Climate Change Levy.

A quadrupling of energy savings expected from UK policy on climate change agreements in place since 2001 was by the UK's own admission not "reliable".

"The UK is trying to outsmart the system by reporting measures which may not go beyond European minimum standards," said Dora Petroula, an officer at Climate Action Network Europe. "But tackling wasteful energy use will not happen by manoeuvring around the directive's requirements. With the Paris [UN] climate deal on the horizon, it is high time to get serious about energy efficiency measures."

Energy-guzzling buildings alone are responsible for some 40% of European carbon emissions and the bloc's climate commissioner, Miguel Canete, has promised an "energy efficiency first" agenda to tackle the issue.

But European officials have long accused the continent's energy ministries of talking the talk on efficiency, while in practice seeing energy waste action as a "luxury", safe in the knowledge that documents submitted to Brussels would rarely be read.

EU sources say that contrary to claims that stronger enforcement of efficiency legislation would be discussed at a summit later this week, a narrowly-defined energy security agenda is likely to dominate the agenda.

The Guardian understands that a 'gentleman's agreement' will probably prevent either energy efficiency or the UK's preferred shale gas and nuclear solutions to supply problems being openly discussed.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

The Optimist

BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ

SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1966 words

NASHVILLE -- Al Gore wants to make a point about cellphones, and he has a helpful set of slides on his laptop. ''Do you want to see that?'' he asks, and starts to turn the MacBook around.

''It's not two hours -- don't worry.''

Mr. Gore knows he is The Guy With the Slides, the man who will talk about the environment until you can no longer remember the color of the sky. He long ago mastered the self-deprecating gestures that let you know that he knows what you are thinking. And then he shows you the slides anyway.

Slides have been very good to the former vice president of the United States, almost president, environmental activist and now successful green investor. His slide show on the threat of climate change, presented in the movie ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' won an Academy Award. His efforts to spread the word about global warming earned him, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Peace Prize. His was a dire call to strenuous and difficult action.

Over the last year, however, the prophet of doom has become much more a prophet of possibility -- even, perhaps, an optimist. Still an object of derision for the political right, Mr. Gore has seen support for his views rising within the business community: Investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar is skyrocketing as their costs plummet. He has slides for that, too. Experts predicted in 2000 that wind generated power worldwide would reach 30 gigawatts; by 2010, it was 200 gigawatts, and by last year it reached nearly 370, or more than 12 times higher. Installations of solar power would add one new gigawatt per year by 2010, predictions in 2002 stated. It turned out to be 17 times that by 2010 and 48 times that amount last year.

''I think most people have been surprised, even shocked, by how quickly the cost has come down,'' Mr. Gore says in his office in an environmentally friendly building in the prosperous Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville. He sports a style that might be called Southern business casual: a blazer and dress shirt, bluejeans and cowboy boots. At age 66, he is also trimmer than he was during his bearish, bearded period after the 2000 election, thanks in part to a vegan diet he has maintained for two years. In this city? Home of heavenly meat-and-three platters?

He smiles and says proudly, ''There are 10 vegan restaurants in Nashville now.''

Over an hour and a half, he delivers an endless stream of facts and trends from around the globe. Every minute in Bangladesh, two more homes get new rooftop solar panels. Dubai's state utility accepted a bid for a solar power plant with a cost per kilowatt-hour of less than six cents. ''Wow,'' he says, his eyes wide. ''That just set everybody on their ear.''

Such changes, he says, represent a sharp break with the past, not a slow evolution. That is the point of those slides on his laptop. In 1980, one shows, consultants for AT&T projected that 900,000 cellphones might be sold by 2000. In fact, there were 109 million by then. Today there are some seven billion. ''So the question is: Why were they not only wrong, but way wrong?'' he says. He presses a button, and up pops an old photo of a young Al Gore with a helmet of hair and an early mobile phone roughly the size of one of Michael Jordan's sneakers.

The same kind of transformation that turned those expensive, clunkers into powerful computers in every pocket is happening now in energy, he says, with new technology leapfrogging old infrastructure. ''It's coming so fast,'' he says. ''It's very, very exciting.''

All of this means, he adds, that the worst effects of climate change can be blunted. ''We've got a lot of work to do,'' he says. ''We're going to win this.'' He pauses and repeats for effect, part preacher and part TED talk. ''We're going to win this.

''The only question is how long it takes.''

He is pleased to see the Obama administration becoming more active on climate issues. President Obama's advocacy of climate change action was overshadowed by the push for health care legislation, a disappointment for Mr. Gore and other environmentalists. ''He did not use the bully pulpit in quite the way many of us would have wanted in his first term,'' Mr. Gore says. But since Mr. Obama's re-election, his stronger voice on global warming, tougher carbon emission regulations and major climate agreement with China have the former vice president smiling. ''He's doing a terrific job on it now,'' he says.

Mr. Gore is continuing to spread the word. Last month, at the end of an optimistic talk about climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he and the singer Pharrell Williams announced a Live Earth concert to be held on all seven continents on June 18. The concert will include a moment, Mr. Williams told those at the forum, when ''we are literally going to have humanity harmonize all at once.''

In the meantime, Mr. Gore will keep his frenetic schedule of training programs around the world. He has met with large groups in Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, India and elsewhere to present local versions of his climate change slide show. Those who attend, in turn, make the presentation to their own countrymen, spreading the word far more broadly than the documentary ever did. ''The work of the trainees is not the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper, but they are reaching networks of colleagues and friends in a most powerful way,'' said Don Henry, a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. ''Those people are out there changing the world.''

Those presentations are exhaustive -- and exhausting, says Orin Kramer, a New York hedge fund manager and friend of Mr. Gore. He attended a training program with some 600 people that was scheduled to run from 8:30 in the morning until 5 p.m. ''I assumed there's going to be a 40-minute warm-up'' by Mr. Gore, he says, and then the rest of the day's activities would be led by assistants.

Instead, ''he stands up there in front of this group of people for eight and a half hours and 164 climate slides,'' Mr. Kramer says. Many members of the audience were scientists who asked pointed questions, citing specific studies; Mr. Gore answered study with study, point for point. ''He knew more about the academic literature than any of the academics in the audience,'' Mr. Kramer says. ''He basically out-nerded all the other nerds in the room.''

At the same time, Mr. Gore is a less visible leader of the environmental movement in the United States. While he participated in the enormous march before the climate summit in New York City in September, he was not a focus of coverage. But his voice is still being heard, said Reed E. Hundt, a close friend of Mr. Gore who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration. ''Give me the top three global leaders in opinion shaping climate change,'' he says. ''If you don't put Gore in that group, I'd be surprised.'' But being the lone voice, he adds, means ''being a prophet without honor.''

''Nobody wants that job,'' Mr. Hundt says. ''When you go from being the one guy that says this and that and the other to being the first among equals, to being part of a group of like-minded people, that's called success.''

Mr. Gore has also become very rich. He co-founded Generation Investment Management, a firm that takes positions in companies that manage themselves along principles of sustainability, including the effects of climate change. He also sits on the board of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which invests heavily in green start-ups. He sold his cable channel, Current TV, to Al Jazeera America in 2013 in a deal that earned him a reported $100 million. (He and his fellow shareholders sued Al Jazeera last year over the deal, alleging fraud and breach of contract.)

His success in the business world has surprised many people, Mr. Kramer says. ''I didn't think of him as a business guy -- I'm sure nobody did,'' he says, adding that ''he is a phenomenally deep student of critical forces that ultimately change society.''

This success has also been the subject of howls from those who find much to dislike about Mr. Gore. His old foes eagerly take aim when his name comes up. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called climate change ''the greatest hoax,'' now heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. When asked his view of Mr. Gore, he issued a lengthy diatribe against the former vice president's ''alarmism campaign.'' Through a spokeswoman, he said in part, ''Al Gore's immense wealth is largely due to his shameless and incessant promotion of the liberal global warming agenda.'' He added that the federal climate policies Mr. Gore endorses ''would infuse his business ventures with large sums of taxpayer dollars and set him up to become the first climate billionaire.'' Mr. Inhofe also referred to a challenge he issued to Mr. Gore in 2007 to reduce the carbon footprint of his Nashville mansion and extensive travel.

When Mr. Gore is asked whether he will respond to Senator Inhofe's comments, Mr. Gore calls him a ''nice man.'' As the first words are read to him, he chuckles, but his smile grows tense. As the statement ends, he sighs and says, ''Where to start?''

He lets out a breath. ''The most powerful advocate for solving the climate crisis is not me, but Mother Nature,'' he says. ''The reality of the climate crisis is overwhelming, and more and more people see it and feel it every day.''

As for the senator's challenge, Mr. Gore says he does not remember the exchange, but describes the ways he has reduced the environmental impact of his home. He buys electricity from a utility that generates its power from wind and solar sources and has 32 solar panels on his home, as well as insulating windows and LED light bulbs. There are 10 geothermal wells under the driveway. ''I do walk the walk, and don't just talk the talk,'' he says.

Is participating in the green economy a conflict of interest? ''I think that having a consistent outlook in my advocacy and in the way I invest is a healthy way to live,'' he says. Much of what he makes, including all salary from his early stage investing work as a partner at Kleiner Perkins and his Nobel Prize money, goes to his advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project. ''I never imagined when I was younger that this would become the principal focus of my life,'' he says. ''But once you pick up this challenge, you can't put it down. I can't. Don't want to.''

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, says Mr. Gore has become a symbol of climate change, which is both good and bad. He energized Democrats on climate issues, but alienated many conservatives, with the eager help of groups like the Heartland Institute and its allies like Mr. Inhofe, who demonize Mr. Gore as part of their campaign to undercut the scientific consensus on the human role in global warming.

''Al Gore cannot ever reinvent himself from the fact that he became one of the country's most polarizing political leaders,'' Dr. Leiserowitz says. ''Even as he is trying to explain climate change, he is reminding people, amplifying the conservative response around him.''

Mr. Gore has learned to live with the scorn. ''Anyone who carries this banner is going to get shot at,'' he says. ''And I could say it's an honor to be the object of such ire from those who are so on the wrong side of history,'' he adds, laughing.

''It doesn't feel like a great honor,'' he says. He spreads his arms. ''I'm certainly no longer surprised by it.''

Another pause. ''Let them have at it.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/science/the-new-optimism-of-al-gore.html

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY AMANDA MARSALIS/TRUNK ARCHIVE, 2010) (D1)
Clockwise from top, Al Gore meeting with his team in Nashville
with the singer Pharrell Williams in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
a globe being held at the People's Climate March in New York in September
a protest in Monterey, Calif., where Mr. Gore was to speak in 2010
with the anthropologist Jane Goodall and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York at the 2014 march
and with his then-wife, Tipper, at the Academy Awards in 2007. ''An Inconvenient Truth'' won for best documentary. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
LAURENT GILLIERON/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS
ORVILLE MYERS/MONTEREY COUNTY HERALD, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
DON EMMERT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES) (D5)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Drought-stricken California only has one year of water left, Nasa scientist warns;
As backup supply dwindles, Jay Famiglietti says state has about one year of water left and calls for a more 'forward-looking process' to deal with crisis

BYLINE: Amanda Holpuch in New York

SECTION: US NEWS

LENGTH: 445 words

Related: California farmers resign themselves to drought: 'Nobody's fault but God's'

As California experiences the fourth year of one of the most severe droughts in its history, a senior Nasa scientist has warned that the state has about one year of water left.

In an LA Times editorial published last week, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti called for a more "forward-looking process" to deal with the state's dwindling water supply.

Famiglietti, who is also a professor at University of California at Irvine, said the state had about one year of water in reservoir storage and the backup supply, groundwater, was low.

"California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain," Famiglietti wrote. "In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis."

Nasa data shows that water storage has been in steady decline in California since at least 2002, before the drought began.

Famiglietti called for specific measures to combat the crisis, including accelerated implementation of a law that requires groundwater sustainability, a state taskforce focused on long-term solutions and immediate, mandatory rationing. He also said there was a need for the public to be more involved in the issue.

A Field poll released in February showed that 34% of California voters supported a mandatory rationing policy, though 94% agreed that the drought is "serious". The majority of respondents - 61% - favored the voluntary reductions the state currently encourages.

On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on a conservation measure that would limit landscape watering, the strictest mandate directed at such water use the state has considered.

"Our state's water management is complex, but the technology and expertise exist to handle this harrowing future," Famiglietti said. "It will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin."

Scientists are working to determine what role climate change has played in California's drought. Earlier this month, a study by Stanford researchers showed that high temperatures increase the risk of drought conditions. Last year, two research teams said in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that they could not definitively pin the drought on climate change.

A third team, which includes a Stanford researcher from the previous study, said that rare atmospheric conditions are exacerbating the drought.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you;
The Guardian is embarking on a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. In the first, an extract taken from the Introduction to THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein, the author argues that if we treat climate change as the crisis it is, we don't just have the potential to avert disaster but could improve society in the process

BYLINE: Naomi Klein

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 4102 words

A voice came over the intercom: would the passengers of Flight 3935, scheduled to depart Washington DC, for Charleston, South Carolina, kindly collect their carry-on luggage and get off the plane. They went down the stairs and gathered on the hot tarmac. There they saw something unusual: the wheels of the US Airways jet had sunk into the black pavement as if it were wet cement. The wheels were lodged so deep, in fact, that the truck that came to tow the plane away couldn't pry it loose. The airline had hoped that without the added weight of the flight's 35 passengers, the aircraft would be light enough to pull. It wasn't. Someone posted a picture : "Why is my flight cancelled? Because DC is so damn hot that our plane sank four inches into the pavement."

Eventually, a larger, more powerful vehicle was brought in to tow the plane and this time it worked; the plane finally took off, three hours behind schedule. A spokesperson for the airline blamed the incident on "very unusual temperatures".

The temperatures in the summer of 2012 were indeed unusually hot. (As they were the year before and the year after.) And it's no mystery why this has been happening: the profligate burning of fossil fuels, the very thing that US Airways was bound and determined to do despite the inconvenience presented by a melting tarmac. This irony - the fact that the burning of fossil fuels is so radically changing our climate that it is getting in the way of our capacity to burn fossil fuels - did not stop the passengers of Flight 3935 from re-embarking and continuing their journeys. Nor was climate change mentioned in any of the major news coverage of the incident.

I am in no position to judge these passengers. All of us who live high consumer lifestyles, wherever we happen to reside, are, metaphorically, passengers on Flight 3935. Faced with a crisis that threatens our survival as a species, our entire culture is continuing to do the very thing that caused the crisis, only with an extra dose of elbow grease behind it. Like the airline bringing in a truck with a more powerful engine to tow that plane, the global economy is upping the ante from conventional sources of fossil fuels to even dirtier and more dangerous versions - bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, oil from deepwater drilling, gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), coal from detonated mountains, and so on.

Meanwhile, each supercharged natural disaster produces new irony laden snapshots of a climate increasingly inhospitable to the very industries most responsible for its warming. Like the 2013 historic floods in Calgary that forced the head offices of the oil companies mining the Alberta tar sands to go dark and send their employees home, while a train carrying flammable petroleum products teetered on the edge of a disintegrating rail bridge. Or the drought that hit the Mississippi river one year earlier, pushing water levels so low that barges loaded with oil and coal were unable to move for days, while they waited for the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a channel (they had to appropriate funds allocated to rebuild from the previous year's historic flooding along the same waterway). Or the coal-fired power plants in other parts of the country that were temporarily shut down because the waterways that they draw on to cool their machinery were either too hot or too dry (or, in some cases, both).

Living with this kind of cognitive dissonance is simply part of being alive in this jarring moment in history, when a crisis we have been studiously ignoring is hitting us in the face - and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place.

I denied climate change for longer than I care to admit. I knew it was happening, sure. Not like Donald Trump and the Tea Partiers going on about how the continued existence of winter proves it's all a hoax. But I stayed pretty hazy on the details and only skimmed most of the news stories, especially the really scary ones. I told myself the science was too complicated and that the environmentalists were dealing with it. And I continued to behave as if there was nothing wrong with the shiny card in my wallet attesting to my "elite" frequent flyer status.

A great many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke ("more signs of the Apocalypse!"). Which is another way of looking away. Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come up with a technological miracle that will safely suck the carbon out of the skies or magically turn down the heat of the sun. Which, I was to discover while researching this book, is yet another way of looking away.

Or we look but try to be hyper-rational about it ("dollar for dollar it's more efficient to focus on economic development than climate change, since wealth is the best protection from weather extremes") - as if having a few more dollars will make much difference when your city is underwater. Or we look but tell ourselves we are too busy to care about something so distant and abstract - even though we saw the water in the subways in New York City during Superstorm Sandy, and the people on their rooftops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and know that no one is safe, the most vulnerable least of all. And though perfectly understandable, this too is a way of looking away.

Or we look but tell ourselves that all we can do is focus on ourselves. Meditate and shop at farmers' markets and stop driving - but forget trying to actually change the systems that are making the crisis inevitable because that's too much "bad energy" and it will never work. And at first it may appear as if we are looking, because many of these lifestyle changes are indeed part of the solution, but we still have one eye tightly shut.

Or maybe we do look - really look - but then, inevitably, we seem to forget. Remember and then forget again. Climate change is like that; it's hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.

We know that if we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, climate change will change everything about our world. Major cities will very likely drown, ancient cultures will be swallowed by the seas, and there is a very high chance that our children will spend a great deal of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. And we don't have to do anything to bring about this future. All we have to do is nothing. Just continue to do what we are doing now, whether it's counting on a techno-fix or tending to our gardens or telling ourselves we're unfortunately too busy to deal with it.

All we have to do is not react as if this is a full-blown crisis. All we have to do is keep on denying how frightened we actually are. And then, bit by bit, we will have arrived at the place we most fear, the thing from which we have been averting our eyes. No additional effort required.

There are ways of preventing this grim future, or at least making it a lot less dire. But the catch is that these also involve changing everything. For us high consumers, it involves changing how we live, how our economies function, even the stories we tell about our place on earth. The good news is that many of these changes are distinctly uncatastrophic. Many are downright exciting. But I didn't discover this for a long while.

In 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the massive response from governments around the world showed what was possible when our elites decided to declare a crisis.

We all watched as trillions of dollars were marshaled in a moment. If the banks were allowed to fail, we were told, the rest of the economy would collapse. It was a matter of collective survival, so the money had to be found. In the process, some rather large fictions at the heart of our economic system were exposed (Need more money? Print some!). A few years earlier, governments took a similar approach to public finances after the September 11 terrorist attacks. In many western countries, when it came to constructing the security/surveillance state at home and waging war abroad, budgets never seemed to be an issue.

Related: The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming an overwhelming one | Alan Rusbridger

Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings. The cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us are necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated as nothing more than gentle suggestions, actions that can be put off pretty much indefinitely. Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren't the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too.

Slavery wasn't a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn't a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn't a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn't a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one.

In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of what some have called a "Marshall Plan for the Earth," then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril. We occasionally catch glimpses of this potential when a crisis puts climate change at the front of our minds for a while. "Money is no object in this relief effort. Whatever money is needed for it will be spent," declared British prime minister David Cameron - Mr Austerity himself - when large parts of the UK were underwater from historic flooding in February 2014 and the public was enraged that his government was not doing more to help.

I have begun to understand how climate change - if treated as a true planetary emergency akin to those rising flood waters - could become a galvanising force for humanity, leaving us all not just safer from extreme weather, but with societies that are safer and fairer in all kinds of other ways as well. The resources required to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and prepare for the coming heavy weather could pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty, providing services now sorely lacking, from clean water to electricity, and on a model that is more democratic and less centralized than the models of the past. This is a vision of the future that goes beyond just surviving or enduring climate change, beyond "mitigating" and "adapting" to it in the grim language of the United Nations. It is a vision in which we collectively use the crisis to leap somewhere that seems, frankly, better than where we are right now.

Once the lens shifted from one of crisis to possibility, I discovered that I no longer feared immersing myself in the scientific reality of the climate threat. And like many others, I have begun to see all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalysing force for positive change - how it could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies; to re-claim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence; to block harmful new free trade deals and rewrite old ones; to invest in starving public infrastructure like mass transit and affordable housing; and to take back ownership of essential services like energy and water. All of which would help to end grotesque levels of inequality within our nations and between them.

There is a rich populist history of winning big victories for social and economic justice in the midst of large-scale crises. These include, most notably, the policies of the New Deal after the market crash of 1929 and the birth of countless social programs after the second world war. This did not require the kind of authoritarian trickery that I described in my last book, The Shock Doctrine. On the contrary, what was essential was building muscular mass movements capable of standing up to those defending a failing status quo, and that demanded a significantly fairer share of the economic pie for everyone. A few of the lasting (though embattled) legacies of these exceptional historical moments include: public health insurance in many countries, old age pensions, subsidised housing, and public funding for the arts.

I am convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity on an even greater scale. As part of the project of getting our emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs, and reinvigorate democracy from the ground up.

But before any of these changes can happen - before we can believe that climate change can change us - we first have to stop looking away.

"You have been negotiating all my life." So said Canadian college student Anjali Appadurai, as she stared down the assembled government negotiators at the 2011 United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa. She was not exaggerating.

The world's governments have been talking about preventing climate change for more than two decades; they began negotiating the year that Anjali, then 21 years old, was born. And yet as she pointed out in her memorable speech on the convention floor, delivered on behalf of all of the assembled young people: "In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises." In truth, the intergovernmental body entrusted to prevent "dangerous" levels of climate change has not only failed to make progress over its 20-odd years of work (and almost 100 official negotiation meetings since the agreement was adopted), it has overseen a process of virtually uninterrupted backsliding. Our governments wasted years fudging numbers and squabbling over start dates, perpetually trying to get extensions like undergrads with late term papers.

The catastrophic result of all this obfuscation and procrastination is now undeniable. In 2013, global carbon dioxide emissions were 61% higher than they were in 1990, when negotiations toward a climate treaty began in earnest. Indeed the only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them. Meanwhile, the annual UN climate summit, which remains the best hope for a political breakthrough on climate action, has started to seem less like a forum for serious negotiation than a very costly and high-carbon group therapy session, a place for the representatives of the most vulnerable countries in the world to vent their grief and rage while low-level representatives of the nations largely responsible for their tragedies stare at their shoes.

Related: Guardian Live stream: Naomi Klein

Though momentum is picking up slightly ahead of December's critical negotiations in Paris, this has been the mood ever since the collapse of the much-hyped 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. On the last night of that massive gathering, I found myself with a group of climate justice activists, including one of the most prominent campaigners in Britain.

Throughout the summit, this young man had been the picture of confidence and composure, briefing dozens of journalists a day on what had gone on during each round of negotiations and what the various emission targets meant in the real world. Despite the challenges, his optimism about the summit's prospects never flagged. Once it was all over, however, and the pitiful deal was done, he fell apart before our eyes. Sitting in an overlit Italian restaurant, he began to sob uncontrollably. "I really thought Obama understood," he kept repeating.

I have come to think of that night as the climate movement's coming of age: it was the moment when the realisation truly sank in that no one was coming to save us. The British psychoanalyst and climate specialist Sally Weintrobe describes this as the summit's "fundamental legacy" - the acute and painful realisation that our "leaders are not looking after us... we are not cared for at the level of our very survival." No matter how many times we have been disappointed by the failings of our politicians, this realisation still comes as a blow. It really is the case that we are on our own and any credible source of hope in this crisis will have to come from below.

In Copenhagen, the major polluting governments - including the US and China - signed a nonbinding agreement pledging to keep temperatures from increasing more than 2C above where they were before we started powering our economies with coal. This well-known target, which supposedly represents the "safe" limit of climate change, has always been a highly political choice that has more to do with minimising economic disruption than with protecting the greatest number of people. When the two degrees target was made official in Copenhagen, there were impassioned objections from many delegates who said the goal amounted to a "death sentence" for some low-lying island states, as well as for large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact it is a very risky target for all of us : so far, temperatures have increased by just 0.8C and we are already experiencing many alarming impacts, including the unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet in the summer of 2012 and the acidification of oceans far more rapidly than expected. Allowing temperatures to warm by more than twice that amount will unquestionably have perilous consequences.

In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by that target. "As global warming approaches and exceeds two degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements. Examples include the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more rapid sea-level rise, or large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods. This would further add to 21st-century global warming and impact entire continents." In other words, once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the mercury stops is not in our control.

But the bigger problem - and the reason Copenhagen caused such great despair - is that because governments did not agree to binding targets, they are free to pretty much ignore their commitments. Which is precisely what is happening. Indeed, emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes within our economic structure, two degrees now looks like a utopian dream. And it's not just environmentalists who are raising the alarm. The World Bank also warned when it released its report that "we're on track for a 4C warmer world [by century's end] marked by extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise." And the report cautioned that, "there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4C world is possible." Kevin Anderson, former director (now deputy director) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which has quickly established itself as one of the UK's premier climate research institutions, is even blunter; he says 4C warming is "incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community".

We don't know exactly what a 4C world would look like, but even the best-case scenario is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea levels by one or possibly even two meters by 2100 (and would lock in at least a few additional meters over future centuries). This would drown some island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many coastal areas from Ecuador and Brazil to the Netherlands to much of California and the northeastern US, as well as huge swaths of South and south-east Asia. Major cities likely in jeopardy include Boston, New York, greater Los Angeles, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

Meanwhile, brutal heat waves that can kill tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become entirely unremarkable summer events on every continent but Antarctica. The heat would also cause staple crops to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe (it is possible that Indian wheat and US corn could plummet by as much as 60%), this at a time when demand will be surging due to population growth and a growing demand for meat. When you add ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapses, widespread disruptions to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to the mix, it indeed becomes difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could be sustained (that is, where such a thing exists in the first place).

Keep in mind that these are the optimistic scenarios in which warming is more or less stabilized at 4C and does not trigger tipping points beyond which runaway warming would occur. And this process may be starting sooner than anyone predicted. In May 2014, Nasa and University of California, Irvine scientists revealed that glacier melt in a section of West Antarctica roughly the size of France now " appears unstoppable". This likely spells eventual doom for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which according to lead study author Eric Rignot "comes with a sea level rise of between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide." The disintegration, however, could unfold over centuries and there is still time for emission reductions to slow down the process and prevent the worst.

Much more frightening than any of this is the fact that plenty of mainstream analysts think that on our current emissions trajectory, we are headed for even more than four degrees of warming. In 2011, the usually staid International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report projecting that we are actually on track for 6C - 10.8F - of warming. And as the IEA's chief economist Fatih Birol put it : "Everybody, even the school children, knows that this will have catastrophic implications for all of us."

These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were heading toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilisation in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already doing, which is what the climate scientists have been telling us for years.

As the Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie G Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010, "Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilisation."

It doesn't get much clearer than that. And yet rather than responding with alarm and doing everything in our power to change course, large parts of humanity are, quite consciously, continuing down the same road. Only, like the passengers aboard Flight 3935, aided by a more powerful, dirtier engine. What is wrong with us?

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Peruvian farmer demands climate compensation from German company;
RWE asked to pay for costs of protecting home lying in the floodpath of a glacial lake as its historical emissions are linked to glacial retreat in the Andes

BYLINE: Dan Collyns in Lima

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 568 words

A Peruvian farmer is demanding that a German energy company pay him compensation for its role in causing historical climate change which, he claims, leaves his home "acutely threatened" by a glacial lake which could burst its banks.

In an unprecedented legal claim in Europe, Saul Luciano Lliuya demands that RWE pay part of the costs for urgent protective measures as his home lies in the floodpath of the Palcacocha lake which is damming glacial melt-water upstream of his home in the town of Huaraz, in Peru's Cordillera Blanca, or white mountain range.

"Two glaciers could collapse into the lake, that would cause a big flood wave which would destroy the house of my family and many other houses in Huaraz. This is an unacceptable risk," he told the Guardian.

"For a long time, my father and I have thought that those who cause climate change should help solve the problems it causes. Peru is a poor and vulnerable country. The big polluters who have contributed to climate change should now contribute to the solutions of our problems," Lliuya said.

The claim alleges that RWE - one of Europe's biggest historical emitters according to a 2013 report in the journal Climatic Change - contributed to the greenhouse effect and, in turn, glacial retreat in the Andes.

The Palcacocha lagoon has grown in size by eight times and in volume by 30 times in less than 40 years due to glacial melt, the claim details.

Local authorities in Huaraz say there is an acute risk of flooding and have repeatedly declared a state of emergency. In 1941, about 5,000 inhabitants were killed when an earthquake caused chunks of ice to collapse into the lake, which was much smaller than it is today. However, there is no early warning system in place, unlike in the nearby town of Carhuaz.

Roda Verheyen, a Hamburg-based environmental lawyer representing Lliuya, said her client plans to sue RWE through Germany's civil courts in what would be an unprecedented legal proceeding in Europe.

"We have a solid case with respect to RWE's contribution to greenhouse gases and how that leads to the risk in which Mr Lliuya's home finds itself," Verheyen told the Guardian.

"My client approached me with one question: 'Do you think it is correct that polluters never own up to their responsibility?' As a lawyer and as a human being, I have to say, it is not fair. Can we do something about it?" she said.

Lliuya is demanding that RWE pay him for its contribution to global total emissions from 1751 to 2010, which is calculated to be 0.47%, according to the 2013 report.

To avert the risk of flooding, the Palcacocha lake would need to be drained until further safety works could be put in place, such as building new dams and modernising existing ones.

In order to undertake these measures, Lliuya asks the company to contribute around (EURO)20,000 ( £14,250 ), an amount equivalent to 0.47% of the projected total costs to drain or reinforce the lake and install a glacial flood outburst early warning system.

"The company has to pay its fair share of financing measures to protect those in danger," said Christoph Bals, of German NGO, Germanwatch, which is supporting the claim. "Companies that create risks for others through their business activity have to shoulder their responsibility," he said.

Michael Murphy, a spokesman for RWE Group said on Monday that the company could not comment as it had yet to receive the legal claim from Lliuya.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

What is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?;
The $43.5bn trust is the largest philanthropic organisation in the world and is committed to the eradication of malaria and polio, and controlling the spread of tuberculosis and HIV

BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 472 words

The story of the world's largest private foundation begins with a couple reading a news article about suffering in the developing world. The husband clipped the article and sent it to his father, the philanthropist William H Gates, writing: "Dad, maybe we can do something about this."

It was the first step towards the creation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since beginning their great philanthropic mission in 1997, the husband and wife team have become a powerful catalyst for the improvement of lives in the world's poorest countries.

The foundation's trust endowment of $43.5bn (£29.5bn) makes grant payments in excess of $3bn every year ($3.9bn in 2014). Its focus has been on bridging the enormous health deficit between rich and poor countries and on fights it sees as vast, but ultimately winnable. Among its goals are the eradication of malaria and polio, and controlling the spread of tuberculosis and HIV.

Investor Warren Buffet joined the foundation as a trustee in 2006 with a £30bn pledge. In 2008, Bill Gates resigned as chief software architect at Microsoft, the technology company he built, to focus solely on the work of the foundation.

In total, the fund has given $32.9bn in grants to health programmes around the world. Its work focusses on prevention, immunisation and vaccination.

Since the turn of the century, partly thanks to the work of the foundation, four countries have eradicated malaria. Mortality from the disease has dropped 42% in that time. Bill said in 2014 that malaria could be eliminated within a generation.

In 2014, after a massive coordinated effort between the Indian government, the Gates Foundation and Rotary International, India announced it was officially polio-free. The programme employed 2m vaccinators who spread out across the country. Just five years before, India had more than half the world's polio cases. It was "the greatest global health achievement I have ever witnessed", said Bill. The foundation now aims to eradicate polio worldwide by 2018.

The foundation has also funded the Guardian's award-winning Global Development website since 2010.

As well as his work on health through the foundation, Bill has made climate change and clean energy a personal mission. The foundation's annual letter for 2015 says their achievements could be undone by the advancing climate crisis.

"It is fair to ask whether the progress we're predicting will be stifled by climate change. The most dramatic problems caused by climate change are more than 15 years away, but the long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide. Bill is investing time in this work personally (not through our foundation) and will continue to speak out about it."

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming;
As progressive institutions, the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust should commit to taking their money out of the companies that are driving global warming, says the Guardian's editor-in-chief as he launches our climate campaign

BYLINE: Alan Rusbridger

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 1973 words

The world has much more coal, oil and gas in the ground than it can safely burn. That much is physics.

Anyone studying the question with an open mind will almost certainly come to a similar conclusion: if we and our children are to have a reasonable chance of living stable and secure lives 30 or so years from now, according to one recent study 80% of the known coal reserves will have to stay underground, along with half the gas and a third of the oil reserves.

If only science were enough.

If not science, then politics? MPs, presidents, prime ministers and members of congress are always telling us (often suggesting a surrender of civil liberties in return) that their first duty is the protection of the public.

But politics sometimes struggles with physics. Science is, at its best, long term and gives the best possible projection of future risk. Which is not always how politics works, even when it comes to our security. Politicians prefer certainty and find it difficult to make serious prudent planning on high probabilities.

On climate change, the public clamour is in inverse proportion to the enormity of the long-term threat. If only it were the other way round. And so, year after year, the people who represent us around the UN negotiating tables have moved inches, not miles.

When, as Guardian colleagues, we first started discussing this climate change series, there were advocates for focusing the main attention on governments. States own much of the fossil fuels that can never be allowed to be dug up. Only states, it was argued, can forge the treaties that count. In the end the politicians will have to save us through regulation - either by limiting the amount of stuff that is extracted, or else by taxing, pricing and limiting the carbon that's burned.

If journalism has so far failed to animate the public to exert sufficient pressure on politics through reporting and analysis, it seemed doubtful whether many people would be motivated by the idea of campaigning for a paragraph to be inserted into the negotiating text at the UN climate talks in Paris this December. So we turned to an area where campaigners have recently begun to have marked successes: divestment.

There are two arguments in favour of moving money out of the biggest and most aggressive fossil fuel companies - one moral, the other financial.

The moral crusaders - among them Archbishop Desmond Tutu - see divestment from fossil fuels in much the same light as earlier campaigners saw the push to pull money out of tobacco, arms, apartheid South Africa - or even slavery. Most fossil fuel companies, they argue, have little concern for future generations. Of course, the companies are run by sentient men and women with children and grandchildren of their own. But the market pressures and fiduciary duties involved in running public companies compel behaviour that is overwhelmingly driven by short-term returns.

So - the argument goes - the directors will meanwhile carry on business as usual, no matter how incredible it may seem that they will be allowed to dig up all the climate-warming assets they own. And, by and large - and discounting recent drops in the price of oil - they continue to be reasonably good short-term businesses, benefiting from enormous subsidies as they search for even more reserves that can never be used.

The pragmatists argue the case on different grounds. It is simply this: that finance will eventually have to surrender to physics.

If - eventually - the companies cannot, for the sake of the human race, be allowed to extract a great many of the assets they own, then many of those assets will in time become valueless. So people with other kinds of fiduciary duty - people, say, managing endowments, pension funds and investment portfolios - will want to get their money out of these companies before the bubble bursts.

Of course, the financial risk comes not simply from the threat of regulation, but could also be hastened by the march of alternative clean energy. Global investment in clean energy jumped 16% in 2014 to £205bn, but because of the rapid drop in the price of that energy (the cost of solar has dropped by two-thirds in 6 years ), the money invested last year bought almost double the amount of electricity capacity as in 2011.

So there's a risk calculation to be done by anyone invested in fossil fuels - which, one way or another, is probably most of us. Get out too early and you might forgo the reasonable returns based on current performance and the book value of the assets that are notionally exploitable.

But what of the risk of being a late exiter? Do you wait and judge when the politicians could finally summon the will to start making regulatory and market interventions ... and then get out? And at the same time as everyone else is trying to do the same?

This is why the divestment movement has changed from being a fringe campaign to something every responsible fund manager can no longer ignore. How could they, when even the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the " vast majority of reserves are unburnable " and the bank itself is conducting an inquiry into the risk that inflated fossil fuel assets pose to the stability of the financial system ?

Related: The biggest story in the world

When the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, urges : "Be the first mover. Use smart due diligence. Rethink what fiduciary responsibility means in this changing world. It's simple self-interest. Every company, investor and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic"?

When the Bank of England's deputy head of supervision for banks and insurance companies, Paul Fisher, warns, as he did this month : "As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels - a growing financial market in recent decades - may take a huge hit"?

Or listen to Hank Paulson, no bleeding liberal, but secretary of the Treasury under Bush and former CEO of Goldman Sachs: "Each of us must recognise that the risks are personal. We've seen and felt the costs of underestimating the financial bubble. Let's not ignore the climate bubble."

President Obama puts it most pithily : "We're not going to be able to burn it all."

So the argument for a campaign to divest from the world's most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. But the divestment movement is sometimes misunderstood. The intention is not to bankrupt the companies, nor to promote overnight withdrawal from fossil fuels - that would not be possible or desirable.

Related: 'If you read the Guardian, join the Guardian'

Divestment serves to delegitimise the business models of companies that are using investors' money to search for yet more coal, oil and gas that can't safely be burned. It is a small but crucial step in the economic transition away from a global economy run on fossil fuels.

The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don't start one unless you know you're going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.

It's clear, from our researches over the past few weeks, that many company directors and fund managers have had a nagging feeling that this is something coming up the agenda that - one day - they will have to think about. As the Guardian's campaign mounts, we hope they will appreciate that there is some urgency about the choices they make.

Who will take the lead? Some huge endowments and investment funds have already announced that they will be decarbonising their portfolios, exiting fossil fuels altogether and/or investing in cleaner alternatives.

They include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ; Stanford, Glasgow and Australian National Universities ; the British Medical Association; Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which has sold off 32 coal companies on climate and environmental grounds ; AP4, the giant Swedish pension fund; and many other faith groups, local councils and asset managers. The World Council of Churches has committed not to invest.

Our own campaign will give readers the information they need to make their own investment decisions and to apply pressure on the workplaces, unions, schools, colleges, churches, NGOs, pension advisers and charities in their lives. But we also want to try to change minds at one or two institutions that have demonstrated inspiring thought leadership in other spheres of life.

The Wellcome Trust handles a portfolio of more than £18bn and invests around £700m a year in science, the humanities, social science education and medical research. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of $43.5bn. Last year it gave away $3.9bn in grants towards health and sustainable development.

In 2014 the Wellcome Trust had £564m invested in Shell, BP, Schlumberger, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone. The Gates Foundation has a financial stake of over $1bn in fossil fuel companies.

By most standards, these are huge sums of money, helping to fund the extraction of unusable oil gas and coal on a massive scale. But, as a proportion of the foundations' own endowments, they are relatively small - just a few percent for the fossil fuel investments we know about. So they could, we think, be divested without damaging overall returns. Indeed, we think they could achieve higher and, over time, safer returns by putting their money into other investments with real opportunities for growth in a world tackling climate change

Because both foundations are a) so progressive in their aims and actions and b) have human health and science at the heart of everything they do, we hope they, of all institutions, will see the force of the call for them to move their money out of a sector whose actions, if unchecked, could cause the most devastating harm to the health of billions. A landmark report by the Lancet and University College London concluded in 2009: "Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century."

Related: Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign

The ask of them is, we think, both modest and simple. We understand that fund managers do not like to make sudden changes to their portfolios. So we ask that the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust commit now to divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years. And that they immediately freeze any new investment in the same companies.

We will, of course, suggest that the Guardian Media Group does the same, and keeps you informed about its own deliberations and decisions.

Please sign, retweet and generally spread news about the petition. In everything we say to these foundations, we will emphasise that we come in admiration for what they have done, and continue to do for human health and wellbeing. They aren't the "bad guys". But they could certainly show themselves to be the good guys in this matter of life and death.

One final thing. This campaign is going to be backed up by much reporting and analysis. We would be very pleased to hear from anyone working in the fossil fuel industries at a senior level, either currently or recently. We are interested, for instance, to learn about internal discussions and papers about the state of knowledge and debate about the environmental harm caused by the extractive industries. You can email me confidentially at alan.rusbridger@theguardian.com ; see my PGP key on @arusbridger on Twitter; or use the Guardian's encrypted securedrop platform, which enables anyone to send us documents without being traced.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Cyclone Pam: solutions to the human cost of climate change;
Cyclone Pam is only the latest event calling for an effective response at global level - it must begin with acknowledgement that this is a shared responsibility

BYLINE: Mary Robinson and Gro Harlem Brundtland

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 734 words

"No man is an island," wrote the English poet John Donne. The devastating scenes from Vanuatu in the wake of cyclone Pam show how acutely relevant his lines remain given the threat posed to all humanity by climate change. Small islands are particularly vulnerable to cyclones and rising sea levels, but increased emissions and temperatures mean we are all more vulnerable to climate-related disasters and their devastating consequences.

It is a grim coincidence that cyclone Pam struck as the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction being held in Sendai, Japan. There is a global consensus that a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented events. Moreover, these disasters hit the poorest people and their communities hardest as we see now in Vanuatu, and previously from typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines to the recent floods in Malawi.

Yet even the richest countries of the world have struggled to cope with the increasing ferocity of climate-related natural disasters, from hurricanes Katrina and Sandy in the United States to the damage wrought to the UK's economy from flooding in 2014.

An effective response needs to be conceived at a global level and to start with an acknowledgement that this is a shared challenge and responsibility. "Every man is a piece of the continent," added Donne. In 2015, we can add that every man and woman is a piece of the whole planet. The Sendai conference should serve as a starting point for a coherent and integrated disaster risk reduction framework that builds on the Hyogo Framework for Action adopted in 2005 and promotes a people-centred preventive approach to disaster risk.

The backdrop is stark. Since 2005, omore than 700,000 people have lost their lives, over 1.4 million have been injured and around 23 million have been made homeless as a result of disasters, including natural disasters and climate and other human-made disasters. This undermines the enjoyment of the full range of human rights by millions of people. The total economic loss is more than $1.3tn, whilst between 2008 and 2012 some 144 million people have been displaced from their homes.

The international community has an environmental, economic and a moral imperative to act. This year sees the launch of the UN's sustainable development goals. They cover a broad range of issues from poverty reduction to nutrition, gender equality and environmental protection. It is obvious that credible progress in all these areas goes hand in hand with an effective approach to disaster risk reduction. There is no point, for example, in establishing a new maternal health clinic in a coastal village which risks being swept away entirely by rising sea waters.

As Elders, we believe that reducing vulnerability to both natural and human-made hazards is the key to building resilient communities and societies. Only empowered and resilient communities operating in the context of global solidarity can ensure a just and equitable policy framework for tackling disaster risk and climate change.

We call on the UN to place greater emphasis on disaster risk reduction so that it receives greater emphasis in the SDGs and their measurement metrics, and for policymakers to base their work on meeting the needs of people living in vulnerable situations all over the world. More attention needs to be given to the underlying drivers of risk such as poverty, inequality, weak governance, declining ecosystems and conflict. Above all disaster response has to aid recovery and reduce the risk of future disasters.

An effective, holistic approach to disaster risk reduction must be people-centred and take into account gender inequality and the vital role women play in building community resilience. Women are not only particularly vulnerable to disasters, they are also frontline actors in disaster preparation and response; their participation in disaster planning needs to become common practice.

The stakes at Sendai are high, but we remain optimistic that a positive outcome will be reached. People around the world, from civil society to corporations, are increasingly aware that 2015 is the year when tough decisions need to be taken. As Elders, we will continue to campaign for a just and equitable solution to the world's climate challenge with human rights and solidarity at its centre.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Meet the man leading Britain's fight against Ebola;
From his lab in Liverpool, Professor Tom Solomon is heading part of the UK efforts to combat Ebola. He's hopeful we'll have a treatment and vaccine within a year. But that's only the beginning of our worries...

BYLINE: Simon Hattenstone

SECTION: WORLD NEWS

LENGTH: 4656 words

Professor Tom Solomon was in the shower when he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. It was July 2014 and Radio 4's Today programme was reporting on Ebola. As director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health, he was already well acquainted with the outbreak, which had been first reported in March, in Guinea. But there had been outbreaks of Ebola every few years in Africa since the mid-70s, and they were normally brought under control fairly quickly. True, this outbreak looked bigger than on previous occasions - there had already been a few hundred deaths - but Solomon put this down to the fact that it was the first time Ebola had hit west rather than central Africa, and people were unprepared.

That morning, Solomon heard two things that gave him pause. First, the doctor who was leading the response in Sierra Leone, Sheik Humarr Khan, had caught Ebola himself; he later died. And second, for the first time, an airline passenger had unwittingly carried Ebola to a new country, Nigeria.

By now Solomon's mind was racing. If Khan had caught the disease, and he was meant to be leading the response, there was no way this outbreak was going to be controlled without much more help from outside. And the fact that an airline passenger had carried Ebola was also highly significant: this was the first time it had happened. If Ebola could be carried on a plane to Nigeria, where next?

He'd had that sinking feeling twice before in his life - when he didn't think he'd be able to escape from a hotel fire in Vietnam, and as a junior doctor, when a patient was bleeding out in front of him. He knew something needed to be done quickly. If it wasn't, the consequences would be disastrous.

Three months earlier, in April 2014, the institute had won a £4m grant to open a new health protection research unit specialising in emerging infections. As part of the application, Solomon had gone into great detail about any number of dangerous infections - Japanese encephalitis, tick encephalitis, influenza, dengue, West Nile virus, enterovirus 71, hantavirus, hepatitis E, Lyme disease. Did he mention Ebola? Solomon smiles. "Yes. Ebola was a footnote in our application... Little did we know."

Now, Solomon and his team immediately got to work. By August, the World Health Organisation declared the epidemic to be an international public health emergency - the largest outbreak in history. It was a disease with an appalling mortality rate, estimated at 70% by the WHO last October. Official figures record that almost 10,000 people in west Africa have died so far; unofficially, that figure is feared to be far higher. And although the numbers of cases appear to be coming under control, they could go up again.

The institute's new health protection research unit expected to divide its £4m among the many infections it has been researching over the years. Not surprisingly, things haven't worked out like that. "Much of our activity has been diverted to Ebola," Solomon says. For the infectious diseases industry, the pace of research has been astonishing. It often takes decades to develop vaccines against deadly infections, and some of the deadliest bugs, such as malaria, are still taunting the world's top scientists more than a century after being discovered. "As a community, we have shown that when we need to set up drug and vaccine trials quickly, we can respond," Solomon says. "And we hopefully will have a vaccine and treatment at the end of this terrible disaster, so some good will have come out of it." His team is supporting several studies, including one led by his colleague Dr Peter Horby in Oxford, and another led by Belgian scientists.

The first thing Solomon's team assessed was where the disease would spread next. They predicted that the US would be the first non-African country to import Ebola, which it did in September, and, with eerie accuracy, that Britain would have one case by the end of 2014.

***

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Ebola is that, despite it first being identified in the 1970s, and despite regular outbreaks, so little work has been done until now to combat it - no effective drugs, no vaccine, just the standard procedures of isolating patients, not touching them, regular dousing in chlorine bleach for the uninfected.

Look at it from the parasite's viewpoint; it doesn't want to kill you, it just wants to hang out in there

The primary source, where the Ebola virus hangs out naturally, is still not completely clear. It has long been thought to circulate in fruit bats, which then pass it to other animals including monkeys and antelopes. Humans can become infected from the bats directly, or from eating bushmeat. The first known patient in the current outbreak, two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, is thought to have caught the disease from playing with infected fruit bats in a hollow tree in Meliandou, a tiny village deep in the Guinean forest. It was then transmitted to others via a classic, deadly pattern: through human-to-human contact, often during preparation for funerals, when families wash their loved ones' bodies. At the point when Ebola victims die, they are at their most infectious. There were only 31 houses in Meliandou, but within four months of Emile's death, 13 others in the village had been buried.

The WHO reports that the spread of the disease has now slowed, from a peak of hundreds of new cases a week to less than 100 cases a week in late January, but by the beginning of March had risen to 132 - 81 of them in Sierra Leone. A vaccine is being trialled and earlier predictions of 1 million people being infected will hopefully prove to have been an unhappy blip for the statisticians.

But whatever you do, Solomon says, don't underestimate how serious the epidemic has been - and continues to be. "It's been an emergency, a crisis, a catastrophe, all of those things. To have 10,000 deaths... it's been a disaster."

***

The institute's base, the Ronald Ross Building, is in the centre of a building site in downtown Liverpool. At a glance, it's hard to know whether the buildings are going up or coming down. In fact, this is one of the city's growth areas, known as the Knowledge Quarter. Biomedical research is booming here. More than 300 people work in the institute - medics, scientists, managers. Every room is a melting pot of accents and nationalities. Solomon prides himself on recruiting from far and wide: if you want the best, he says, you've got to go global.

When the institute was formed in 2010, it brought together medics, vets and scientists working on infection and global health problems. "We're probably the only UK institute that has these groups working side-by-side at the bench," Solomon says. "Zoonotic bugs - those that jump from animals to humans - are becoming more and more important. So the One Health approach, which recognises that the health of humans, animals and the environment are interconnected, is key." Another thing that makes the institute unusual is its gender balance: almost 50% of the scientists here are women. (Recent statistics show that in the UK only one-third of science graduates are female, and just 9% of professors.)

Britain, France and the US have led the way in tackling Ebola - and the institute is one of Britain's leading research units working on the virus, alongside Public Health England, Oxford University, Imperial College London, and the two schools of tropical medicine in London and Liverpool. Liverpool has been at the heart of research into infectious diseases for more than 100 years. As one of the country's leading port cities, it did extensive trade with Africa and Asia, and as a result attracted more than its share of tropical diseases. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was founded in 1898 by Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, a local shipowner, a year before its London counterpart. It was the first institution in the world to specialise in teaching and researching tropical diseases. And the city's own Ronald Ross was the first British winner of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, for showing that mosquitoes transmit malaria.

Ross is one of Solomon's heroes. A cabinet on the ground floor of the institute contains his antique microscope, the one he took into the field in India. "There are not a lot of positives about mosquitoes," Solomon says. "When people say what animal is the biggest killer of man, some say sharks, some tigers, but it's actually mosquitoes. They kill through malaria, they kill through encephalitis, they kill through dengue. Some other insects such as ticks and midges also carry bugs, but mosquitoes are far and away the nastiest."

I first met Solomon in 2013, at a fundraising function for the Encephalitis Society. We are both ambassadors (he because he is one of the country's top experts on this infection of the brain, me because I survived it). In a brightly coloured waistcoat and oversized spectacles, he had something of the children's TV presenter about him. He addressed a room of City bankers who knew nothing of the disease. Solomon captivated his audience - he was clear, accessible, moving and, at times, even amusing about this often potentially fatal brain infection. Next time I heard of him, he was presenting a video to publicise encephalitis in which he broke a Guinness world record for the biggest organ made of people: a human brain composed of hundreds of people in multicoloured cagoules.

Solomon grew up in Manchester to an accountant father and teacher mother. He was bright enough as a schoolboy, but nothing special. Ditto university, he says. It was only when he discovered bugs that he came into his own.

It's not easy to stop Solomon, 49, when he's talking about infections. This isn't a job, it's a vocation. Possibly an obsession. It all goes back to his first trip to Africa as a medical student. He had thought he would be a GP until he started working with malaria patients. "Occasionally, you'll sit in a clinic in this country and think some of these people haven't got that much wrong with them, but it wasn't like that out there. There were massive challenges that you could do something about if you were lucky."

He had planned to conduct a study to see if malaria patients had low blood sugar. However, just as he was heading to Mozambique, someone published a paper in the Lancet showing exactly that. So he broadened his research question to look at the relationship between blood sugar levels and all serious childhood diseases. He tested every child who presented, through day and night, to the point of being ill himself. He discovered that many sick children had low blood sugar levels, not just those with malaria, and his findings made it into the Lancet, too.

Solomon returned from Africa, underwent clinical training and then, in his late 20s, headed to Vietnam with his girlfriend Rachel, to work on the Japanese encephalitis epidemic. Three years later, he returned to Britain with Rachel, by now his wife, and two adopted Vietnamese babies. Leah, now 19, was brought to the hospital with tetanus when she was 10 days old. Solomon and Rachel adopted her. Just before they left Vietnam, baby Daisy was brought to a local orphanage and they adopted her, too. They also have two younger biological daughters, Rosie and Eva - they're "home-grown," Solomon says.

Solomon's office is a testament to his many passions. On his desk is a glass kukri full of rum, a gift from his research fellow in Nepal. "I'll only give you a little bit because it's very strong," he says, "but at least you get a flavour." He pours and clinks glasses. "Cheers. I don't normally drink it at work."

On his cabinet is a picture of Rachel and the girls, behind his chair is a signed Liverpool football shirt, and balanced precariously on a high shelf is an Olympic torch (he was an official torchbearer in 2012). His bookshelves are crammed with medical textbooks, a number of which he has written or edited. He shows me a certificate of which he is particularly proud, stating that: "The Guinness world record for the fastest marathon dressed as a doctor was achieved by Tom Solomon in four hours 21 minutes and nine seconds." He ran as The Running Mad Professor (his Twitter handle is @RunningMadProf ), raising £21,000 for the Encephalitis Society.

On the wall are framed photographs of heroes from history. " Sir William Osler is the man who essentially defined medical science as we're still doing it 150 years later. He was one of the guys who said: 'We need to study diseases by looking at people who are sick, at the bedside.' Before that, a lot of it was just theory, pure fancy, learned in the lecture theatres." He points to another photograph. "That's Alexandre Yersin, who was in Vietnam. He discovered that plague was caused by a bacteria. I was in Vietnam 100 years after him. Then, not long after, we had Sars happening in south-east Asia, and there were a lot of parallels."

Solomon is a great fan of practitioner-scientists such as Osler and Yersin. These days, he spends two days a week working with patients at the Walton Centre and Royal Liverpool University hospital, and three at the institute. For the past 20 years, he has specialised in encephalitis - another infection with a shocking mortality rate. Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain that, in Britain, is often caused by the herpes virus (unlike Japanese encephalitis, which is passed on through mosquitoes). Survivors of encephalitis are often left with complex, untreatable problems. Solomon tells me of a patient who cannot lay down new memories. "He can't remember anything since the 1970s. His hard drive, if you like, has lost 30 years' worth of memories."

We head for lunch in the Victoria Gallery & Museum, the original Liverpool University building. "Just think," Solomon says, "the building next to us is where Ronald Ross worked, and 100 years on we're still working on emerging diseases spread by mosquitoes." A sit-down lunch is a luxury - he normally grabs a sandwich. Over lunch, it becomes apparent that he has quite an affection for infections. He anthropomorphises viruses, tells me why we have to look at things from their point of view rather than from ours - they are just trying to get on with life, reproduce and survive. People assume that they want to kill humans, but the truth couldn't be more different. Those viruses that know what is good for them may make people ill or lie latent for years, surviving off humans, but not destroying us. After all, if they kill us, they kill themselves.

Ebola isn't stupid - it's pretty good at duping the immune system. But millions of people get malaria

Back at the institute, Chris Moxon, a scientist in his 30s, is sitting at his computer, studying cerebral malaria. Three years ago he was in Malawi working with malaria patients. Now he's applied for a £600,000 grant to further his research. Does he hope to find a solution to the disease? Moxon, a quietly spoken intellectual, is amused by the question. "You can't apply for a grant saying you're going to solve cerebral malaria, because people will laugh."

Solomon: "It's all incremental."

Moxon: "Yes, you just chip away."

Solomon: "When I was a youngster, there were 2 million deaths a year from malaria. Now it's half a million deaths a year."

Moxon is not entirely convinced. "It depends on who you go with. Chris Murray [a researcher in public health and global health at the University of Washington] said [there were] 1.2 million deaths a year in 2012. He thought the WHO underestimated it."

While Moxon and Solomon quibble over figures, they agree that Ebola is far more likely to be cured than malaria. "The difference with Ebola is that, potentially, within a short cycle, by the end of 2015, we might well have a treatment that works and a vaccine," Solomon says. A team led by Professor Julian Hiscox at the institute, in collaboration with Public Health England, has been looking for possible treatments. They examined which proteins inside a cell are hijacked by the virus to help it reproduce, and discovered that one virus protein, known as VP24, disrupts signalling in infected human cells and so impairs the fight against the virus. In September, Hiscox suggested that a drug known as ouabain, traditionally used for severe heart disease, could reduce the virus's replication.

Is Moxon surprised by the pace of progress with Ebola? "It is extraordinary. It is wonderful to have the huge world interest and everybody coming together. But even with that amount of money and attention, you couldn't make that amount of headway on malaria." You get the impression that neither Solomon nor Moxon much respects Ebola as a virus, whereas malaria is held in awe.

Malaria is simply smarter, Solomon says. "It has been learning how to avoid our immune system for millennia, because we are the natural host for it. I remember when I was an even younger student than you," he tells Moxon, "in Mozambique, we went to a village and bled all the kids there. They were playing football and having fun, yet one in three of them had malaria parasites in their blood. So this parasite has learned how to live in the human body without making you so sick that you die, because it doesn't want to kill you. You've got to look at it from the parasite's viewpoint; it just wants to hang out in there."

"And occasionally, unfortunately, it makes someone really sick," Moxon adds.

"Don't get me wrong," Solomon says, "Ebola isn't stupid - in fact, it's pretty good at duping the immune system." But malaria is more sophisticated in that it can infect the host again and again. Ebola either kills the human or is killed by the human. "Millions of people get malaria. The only people who get Ebola are those who are caring for somebody who is ill with Ebola. Unless you're mopping up after them, you're not so much at risk."

We've been tracking Japanese encephalitis, and one possibility is that climate change is allowing it to spread

The problem in west Africa is that so many of the medics were infected. "The healthcare services there are falling apart. In some places, half the doctors and nurses are dead." For this reason, Solomon says, it is vital that UK healthcare workers continue going to west Africa to diagnose and treat patients. He mentions the nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who was diagnosed only once she had returned to Britain, acknowledging that her story is enough to put some off going out to help. "She was protected, working for Save the Children, she shouldn't have got sick. And if someone like that is getting ill, it makes people think, blimey. The original west African doctors and nurses who died, it was because they didn't have proper gear to protect themselves. If Pauline Cafferkey had died, it would have a bad impact on people's willingness to go. But, in some ways, this isn't new: medics have always been at risk of infectious diseases. A lot of doctors used to die of TB just because they were exposed to it."

Thankfully, Cafferkey made a good recovery, but does he feel anxious when his staff go to west Africa? Yes, of course, he says - and slightly guilty. "If I've got people going out there, obviously I'd like to think I'd lead by example." Solomon has volunteered to go, but it has been decided that he is needed more at the institute, running things there.

Is there any chance of an Ebola epidemic in Britain? No, he says, this is when the NHS comes into its own. "The government can say, 'This is the kind of hospital that can take patients, this is how they should be set up', whereas in America it's a series of states that do their own thing, so patients turned up and they were not prepared for it."

Twenty-six-year-old biotechnologist Raquel Medialdea Carrera has been at the institute for four months and is about to fly out to Sierra Leone, where she will be working in the diagnostics laboratory set up by Public Health England. Is she nervous? "Not yet. I got very nervous when I had to tell my parents, who are back in Spain. That was scary. First I told my father, and he said don't tell your mother until you're there. But I told her. And they understood."

What do her friends think when she tells them she is going? "Most of them are like, 'Are you crazy?' The second reaction is, 'Don't get close to me for a few months after you're back.'"

Medialdea Carrera will be in Sierra Leone for five weeks - the maximum stint allowed. She will wear a full body suit to work, and is allowed to do only three one-hour shifts a day. "Because it's absolutely exhausting," Solomon explains. "It's like stepping into an oven dressed in this plastic suit."

When she returns, she will get time off work to ensure she's healthy and to readjust. It is not uncommon for people to return traumatised after what they've seen. The horror is not just in the number of deaths, but in their manner.

***

We're heading towards the containment level three lab. This is the highest containment level at the institute (the absolute highest is containment level four, run by Public Health England at Porton Down - full body suits are needed even to enter, and that is where the actual Ebola virus is worked on). To enter containment level three, we have to pass through the kind of air-locked doors you would find in a high-security prison. The room is freezing, and the only noise is the constant mechanical whirring of the negative pressure cabinet that pulls in the air flow, so if there is a spillage of virus, it will rise up through the filters and keep workers safe. Solomon points to a massive freezer regulated at -77C to keep all the viruses in peak condition (home freezers work at -20C). On the door of the freezer are the names of all the viruses deposited (dengue, Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya ) and the scientists who have been working on them (Lucy, Daniel, Denis, Jenny, Neil and Kevin). The casual intimacy of the first names next to the deadly disease labels is unnerving.

Of all the diseases Solomon has worked with, it's Japanese encephalitis that continues to fascinate him most. Another clever bug, he says, and one that he has enjoyed most success combating.

When he went to Vietnam in 1991, the children who were unwell, in comas or having fits, were thought to have cerebral malaria, but it turned out to be Japanese encephalitis. Others looked as if they had polio, even though polio had been pretty well eradicated. These children also proved to be infected with the Japanese encephalitis virus. The disease manifests itself in different forms, making it tricky to diagnose. Twenty years ago, there was only one international lab in south-east Asia where they could test for it, so Solomon and his colleagues at the University of Malaysia in Sarawak developed a new diagnostic kit: a simple test they could do by the bedside.

"We call it a dot blot kit," Solomon says. "Essentially, you were putting blood on blotting paper and looking at the colour change. Tests like that are now used across the whole of south-east Asia." They also devised a simple way of measuring the outcome of Japanese encephalitis, now known as the Liverpool Outcome Score. This score means that governments can work out how much disability there is, how much Japanese encephalitis is costing them, and decide whether it is cost-effective to vaccinate. And most have decided it is. The end result is that manufacturers have brought down the cost of the vaccine and are producing millions of doses.

But Japanese encephalitis remains incredibly difficult to treat. While it is estimated that over the past 10 years up to 800,000 case have been prevented through the use of vaccines, there is still no drug to treat those who get infected. In one trial, interferon, a drug traditionally used for cancers and hepatitis, slowed down the illness, but did not stop people dying. Solomon and his team, the Brain Infections Group, are still working on other treatments.

Meanwhile, the virus is spreading to new geographical areas. The last decade has seen the disease creep up towards the highlands of Nepal. Previously, it was found only in the low-lying rice paddy areas. "We've been tracking it," Solomon says, "and one possibility is that climate change is allowing the disease to spread."

There was a time we thought, give antibiotics for everything. Bugs are becoming resistant. It's Darwinian evolution

Japanese encephalitis, which is carried by mosquitoes, is unlikely to become a problem in the UK, but Solomon wouldn't rule anything out. "With climate change, some diseases that couldn't come here because it was too cold might be able to in the future. Dengue is another disease carried by mosquitoes that we're seeing in Europe a bit, and that might come to the UK eventually. There is also lots of tick-born encephalitis in Europe, and the UK is at risk from that, too. So it's about looking at what the risks are and trying to mitigate them."

So what is the greatest threat facing people in the UK? Ah, Solomon says, the biggest threat is not a single disease. He takes me down to a huge laboratory to explain. This is only containment level two, meaning we can walk around in white coats, but the work going on here is vital for our future. "There was a time when we thought we had infections cracked - we could just give antibiotics for everything." That is, until we started to overuse them, both in treating human infections, but also in the farming industry.

Now, antimicrobial resistance, also known as antibiotic resistance, is one of our greatest threats. "Bugs are becoming resistant to antimicrobials," Solomon says. "It's just Darwinian evolution." The rise of these antimicrobial-resistant bugs is a terrifying prospect, and that is why places such as the institute are dedicating so much energy to tackling it.

We meet Elaine Waters, who is counting bacteria in a small dish to see how many are resistant. She is part of a team led by Aras Kadioglu looking for alternatives to antibiotics. Their findings have just been published in the science journal Nature, showing a new way of treating bacterial infections. Instead of antibiotics, liposomes - tiny, lab-produced bubbles of fat - are used to vacuum up the toxins.

These liposomes could be lifesavers for millions. But, as with most medical research, we are talking long-term, Solomon says. "The next step is to show it works in animals, then to show it's safe in humans. The clinical trials take years to set up and do, which is why the Ebola thing is so remarkable: it's all been done over months."

Meanwhile, to control antimicrobial resistance, we have to make better use of the antibiotics we have. "We've got to somehow encourage GPs and the public to reserve them for those who are really unwell. Convince farmers globally not to use them ad lib to make animals grow more quickly."

Solomon hopes that during 2015 scientists will get the better of Ebola. And then they will focus on the many other perils, known and unknown, that follow in its wake. Yes, there may be other potential Ebolas out there, but one of the most important battles to be fought in the world's laboratories over the next few years will be antimicrobial resistance. If antibiotics do fail us, it could be catastrophic for mankind - pneumonia, for example, would once again become a common killer.

But Solomon is an optimist: rather than focusing on the threat, he prefers to see it as an opportunity. He looks at the liposomes dancing in their tiny dish of bacteria and toxins rather lovingly: "In 10 years' time, if you're unfortunate enough to get a severe bacterial infection, you may well be cured with the treatment that has come from this institute."

· This article was amended on 16 March 2015. An earlier version quoted Tom Solomon as saying that Pauline Cafferkey, the British nurse who contracted Ebola, worked for Médecins sans Frontières. In fact she worked at a Save the Children treatment centre in Sierra Leone.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: March 20, 2015

CORRECTION: A feature in last Saturday's Weekend magazine about Professor Tom Solomon, director of the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool, quoted him as saying that Pauline Cafferkey, the British nurse who contracted Ebola in west Africa, worked for Médecins sans Frontières. In fact she worked at a Save the Children treatment centre in Sierra Leone ( Going viral, page 32).

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Norway's sovereign wealth fund drops over 50 coal companies;
Government Pension Fund Global sold off coal holdings in 2014, but campaigners are disappointed that investment in coal is only down marginally

BYLINE: Damian Carrington

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 591 words

The world's richest sovereign wealth fund divested from over 50 coal companies in 2014, new analysis has revealed.

Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), founded on the nation's oil and gas resources and worth now £580bn in total, is being targeted by fossil fuel divestment campaigners.

The GPFG sold off its holdings in 53 coal companies in 2014, dumping 16 US companies including Peabody Energy and the mountain-top-removal companies Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources. The fund also dropped 13 Indian companies, including the giant Coal India.

But only three Chinese coal companies were removed from the fund's portfolio and the total value of its coal holdings fell by only 5% to £6.5bn. On Friday, it was revealed that the fund's stake in major oil and gas companies rose to £20bn in 2014.

"The GPFG divested from 53 coal companies, which is a third of the number of coal companies we found in the portfolio the year before," said Heffa Schuecking, director of the German NGO Urgewald, which did the analysis. "While this is a laudable first step, the overall result is very disappointing as the GPFG's total investments in the coal industry show only a marginal decrease."

Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace Norway said: "We are happy to see that the GPFG divested £60m by dropping 13 Indian coal companies, but at the same time, it has increased its investments in the Chinese coal sector by £61m." China's coal consumption fell for the first time this century in 2014, helping to end the upward trend of global carbon emissions.

Norway's largest private pension fund KLP divested from coal in 2014 and Gulowsen said: "It is shameful that Norway's private pension funds are far more willing to take action on the coal issue than the GPFG. Investing oil proceeds into the coal industry is the worst possible use of our nation's money."

A series of analyses have shown existing coal, oil and gas reserves are several times the amount that can be burned whilst keeping global warming under the internationally agreed 2C limit. A recent study found 80% of coal reserves would have to be kept in the ground.

Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors.

The Go Fossil Free divestment campaign received a significant boost on Sunday, when it received the support of the UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations.

"We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," said Nick Nuttall, the official spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC). "We have lent our own moral authority as the UN to those groups or organisations who are divesting."

The GPFG revealed in February that it had shed 32 coal companies due to concerns that environmental action would cut their value, but did not name those companies.

Arild Hermstad from the Future in Our Hands, Norway's largest environmental organisation, said that in the lead-up to the crucial UN climate summit in Paris in December, Norway's parliament had a unique chance to show what responsible investment means by excluding, coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel: "The GPFG's coal investments are tiny in relationship to its total holdings, but the problems they cause around the world are huge."

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu president says climate change contributed to death and destruction;
Aid agencies assess the death toll and extensive damage in South Pacific islands ravaged by category five cyclone· Kiribati president: 'There will be a time when the waters will not recede'· All the latest coverage here

BYLINE: Paul Farrell and Claire Phipps in Sydney

SECTION: WORLD NEWS

LENGTH: 6038 words

block-time published-time 3.54pm AEST

We are going to wrap up this rolling blog for now but please visit here for further news from Vanuatu. The situation on the ground is still very uncertain but as it changes we will be updating our stories.

For a good summary of the events of today so far click here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.00pm AEST

block-time published-time 3.39pm AEST

A Facebook page has been set up to try to help those who have lost relatives and friends in the chaos of the aftermath of the storm. The page is in its infancy but already has a number of pleas from residents of Vanuatu as well as relatives of those who have been visiting the country. It can be found here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.43pm AEST

block-time published-time 3.35pm AEST

There is still scant news from some of the islands which form Vanuatu. Tanna, which has a population of around 29,000, is said to have been very badly affected. It lay directly in the path of Cyclone Pam. The Australian Red Cross has put out this tweet.

Red Cross reports "utter devastation" on southern island of Tanna with most homes destroyed. #vanuatu 4/5

- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 16, 2015

block-time published-time 3.15pm AEST

Meanwhile, if any more evidence was needed of the power of Cyclone Pam, even in its weakened state, here is what it is doing to the east coast of New Zealand.

More than 100 people have now been evacuated as ex-Cyclone Pam hits the East Coast http://t.co/nsbS7nITejpic.twitter.com/UBFLQ5I5lZ

- Newstalk ZB (@NewstalkZB) March 16, 2015

block-time published-time 2.52pm AEST

Frances Cook, a political reporter for a New Zealand radio station, was on holiday in Vanuatu when the storm struck. She has documented some of the aftermath in Port Vila.

Major queues for fuel in Port Vila #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/KMgd1NEbBI

- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015

Main market in Port Vila roped off. Nowhere for farmers to sell, but probably nothing to sell either. #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/QgidW5R7C6

- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015

This sums up a weird situation - evacuated resort in the background, what's left of homes in foreground. #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/V9jb3YX3nv

- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.57pm AEST

block-time published-time 2.34pm AEST

Summary

Here's a round-up of what we know so far, as Vanuatu begins the long process of recovering from the worst cyclone to hit the island chain.

We see the level of sea rise ... the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ... This year we have more than in any year ... yes, climate change is contributing to this.

For leaders of low-lying island atolls, the hazards of global warming affect our people in different ways, and it is a catastrophe that impinges on our rights ... and our survival into the future. There will be a time when the waters will not recede.

block-time published-time 2.17pm AEST

The Associated Press has filed a transcript of the interview with Baldwin Lonsdale, president of Vanuatu. You can read our report on this here. I've taken from AP the section in which Lonsdale discusses what is know about the scale of destruction in his country:

Q: What is the situation in Vanuatu now?

A: Cyclone Pam has devastated Port Vila. More than 90% of the buildings and houses in Port Vila have been destroyed or damaged. The state of emergency that has been issued is only for Port Vila. Once we receive an update on the extent of the damage in the provinces then another state of emergency will be issued for the outer islands.

Q: Is there an update on casualties and damage?

A: More than 1,000 people have been evacuated to evacuation centres and will be returning to their homes some time later today, if their homes still stand. That's in Port Vila alone. Confirmed dead in Port Vila is six and more than 30 injuries. I do believe the number of casualties will not be high.

Q: What are the urgent needs for Vanuatu?

A: The first priority is the humanitarian needs. People have lost many of their properties. Clothing, eating utensils, bathing. most of the necessary items of the households, all this has been destroyed and damaged. I really request for humanitarian needs and assistance at this stage. Tarpaulins, water containers, medical needs, gathering tools, construction tools all these are very important right now.

Q: Vanuatu is vulnerable to many disaster risks, including earthquakes, volcanoes, extreme weather and sea level rises due to climate change. Do you see the impact of climate change yourself?

A: Climate change is contributing to the disasters in Vanuatu. We see the level of sea rise. Change in weather patterns. This year we have heavy rain more than every year.

block-time published-time 2.01pm AEST

In this video that has been sent to us by World Vision's Chloe Morrison, who is based in Vanuatu, residents describe the horror of the storm as they survey the damage to their homes.

Cyclone Pam survivor: 'I was afraid, I didn't know if I'd face another day.'

block-time published-time 1.49pm AEST

Kiribati president: 'time to act' on climate change

Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, is at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan, and has been speaking about the effects of Cyclone Pam on his country.

Cyclone Pam struck the Pacific ... with Vanuatu bearing the full savagery of Pam, with effects also experienced in the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and of course in my country, in Kiribati ...

We have heard that precious lives have been lost and a great deal of damage was done to infrastructure: homes, food sources, drinking water and communication and transport devastated.

Because of the scattered nature of the small islands that make up the Pacific island communities, it is not always easy to know full well the extent of the damage ... It will take a few days to provide much needed help because no one knows what the situation is in these remote island communities.

It is sad but it is the most vulnerable who have been affected the most and we cannot help them when they need us most.

He extended his condolences to the president of Vanuatu, who is returning home from Japan today.

It is time to act ... Let us match the rhetoric of these international gatherings with pledges and commitments as leaders to do our best to improve conditions and lives of those who need it most.

For leaders of low-lying island atolls, the hazards of global warming affect our people in different ways, and it is a catastrophe that impinges on our rights ... and our survival into the future.

There will be a time when the waters will not recede.

Climate change has exacerbated the severity of natural disasters and frequency, that is worsening the impact on different communities in different parts of the world.

I argue ... that climate change and disasters are so integrated and so related.

Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan. Photograph: UN web TV/screengrab

You can see the full video of the speech here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.54pm AEST

block-time published-time 1.38pm AEST

Bishop: Kiribati and Solomon Islands 'are coping'

Julie Bishop said Australia was also providing some assistance to Tuvalu and was on standby to offer the same to the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, though she said that at present they were believed to be "coping".

block-time published-time 1.35pm AEST

Bishop: Australia 'ready to assist in the long term'

Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, is speaking about the government's latest response to the disaster.

She says she is hoping to visit Vanuatu shortly. Outlining the aid dispatched since the cyclone hit this weekend, Bishop stressed that Australia would offer long-term assistance:

We are aware that this has been a most devastating cyclone; the impact will be felt for quite some time ... We expect that the impact will be quite severe.

We stand ready to assist in the long-term recovery efforts ... We will contnue to invest.

We are longstanding friends of Vanuatu ... We have expressed our support to the president ... The government of Vanuatu is in no doubt that Australia stands ready to support this Pacific island in its time of need

She denied that wider Australian funding to Vanuatu had been cut.

Bishop set out the current Australian response:

We have now sent three Australian military planes to Port Vila ... with humanitarian supplies and teams of personnel.

Today two more military planes will leave Australia and land in Port Vila.

Together with France ... we are carrying out surveillance flights in the southern islands of Vanuatu to assess the extent of the damage.

We have a medical team on the ground and they are assessing the situation at Port Vila hospital, which was quite badly damaged in the storm.

Our concern was to get immediate relief to the people of Vanuatu.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.38pm AEST

block-time published-time 1.09pm AEST

Brisbane flight to Vanuatu cancelled

Although Air Vanuatu successfully flew into Port Vila this morning from Sydney, we are just hearing that Virgin's planned flight from Brisbane to the island has been cancelled "due to safety concerns".

Military aircraft have been arriving in Port Vila this morning, too, but commercial aircraft are also essential to the relief effort, carrying aid workers and supplies, as well as reporters.

Some Australians and others in Vanuatu may have been hoping to leave the islands on the outbound flight, too, as Brisbane journalist Katrina Blowers reports:

Virgin's first flt out of Bris to Vanuatu has been cancelled due to safety concerns. I'm told Austns were hoping to fly out at other end.

- Katrina Blowers (@katrinablowers) March 16, 2015

block-time published-time 1.03pm AEST

Information is starting to come through from other islands in the South Pacific affected by the cyclone.

This image shows flood waters in Kiribati, from where there are reports that three islands have been severely hit :

Flood waters move inland following a storm surge on the island of Kiribati. Image provided by Plan International Australia. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, is also at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan, and has been speaking about the effects of Cyclone Pam on his country. I will listen in and report his speech on this blog shortly.

block-time published-time 12.40pm AEST

'Climate change a key factor'

AFP files this report on the comments made by Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale this morning, in which he spoke of the connection between cylone Pam and climate change. You can read more from his interview here. AFP reports:

Vanuatu's president Baldwin Lonsdale said on Monday that climate change was a key factor in the devastation wrought on the Pacific nation by Super Cyclone Pam, which left six dead and 30 injured in the capital Port Vila alone.

Cyclone Pam smashed into the island archipelago late Friday, bringing sustained winds of more than 250 kilometres (155 miles) per hour and causing widespread damage.

"Climate change is contributing to the disaster in Vanuatu," he said in comments carried on Australian television ahead of his departure from Japan to Sydney.

Pacific island nations regard themselves as the frontline of climate change, given that as low-lying islands they are dangerously exposed to rising sea levels which they say threaten their very existence.

"This is a very devastating cyclone that has crossed Vanuatu," Lonsdale said from Sendai, where he had been attending a United Nations conference.

"I term it as a monster. It's a monster that has hit the republic of Vanuatu," he said as he called for humanitarian assistance ahead of his departure for Sydney, from where he will travel to Vanuatu.

"It means that we have to start anew again."

block-time published-time 12.31pm AEST

Kenny Ang, an Australian living in Vanuatu, spoke to my colleague Joshua Roberton yesterday. Today he is tweeting as people on the islands attempt to patch their lives together again:

Insanity as Bon Marché opens its doors for the first time since #TCPam hit. pic.twitter.com/XQcz9YuXlI

- Kenny Ang (@kenny_ang) March 16, 2015

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.31pm AEST

block-time published-time 12.22pm AEST

ReliefWeb, part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has issued a new report on the state of communications and power in Vanuatu.

The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster says that today internet, radio and GSM (mobile phone) communications remain offline across the country, with the exception of the capital, Port Vila, where the network is almost fully restored ( read more about that here ).

The report goes on:

While information from the provinces and outlying islands is still unavailable, the situation in Port Vila indicates that many homes made of natural and local materials are damaged or destroyed.

It has been reported that Cyclone Pam destroyed all mobile towers except one in Port Vila, resulting in a complete lack of communication between Efate and both north and south provinces. There has also been damage to the HF radio at NDMO [the National Disaster Management Office] preventing them from communicating with any provinces or emergency services or sending community announcements.

Preliminary estimates suggest that up to 80% of power lines are down in Port Vila and will not be fully restored for several weeks.

It says five Telecoms Sans Frontieres responders are on their way to Vanuatu.

block-time published-time 12.06pm AEST

Communications in Port Vila 'almost fully restored'

Communications provider Digicel reports that its phone network in Port Vila is now "almost fully restored", allowing local people to make calls, and send texts and emails.

It says it will now be moving on to the rest of Efate, Tanna, Santo and the other islands.

The lack of communications between the islands is a huge obstacle to the relief effort, as reports from outlying islands have been scarce. Many people have been unable to make contact with friends and family on the islands since cyclone Pam hit.

Digicel says its "off-island fibre connectivity has been fully restored and bandwidth capacity over satellite has been increased by 500%, ensuring domestic towers have sufficient network capacity available".

It is also deploying public charging stations across Vanuatu for people to recharge their phones. In addition, Digicel says it is providing US$250,000 (AU$328,000/£169,000) in free credit "so that customers can get in touch with their loved ones as services are restored".

block-time published-time 11.47am AEST

We are beginning to hear more details from relief workers engaged in the difficult early stages of setting up evacuation centres for those displaced by the cyclone.

ADRA Australia, which had staff stationed in Vanuatu before the storm, says it is beginning its role as co-lead for water and sanitation at evacuation centres on Efate, part of the Shefa province, close to Port Vila. It reports that 80% of evacuation centres are without hand-washing facilities, with up to 309 people sharing a toilet.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific says it has 40 volunteers in Port Vila working across 26 evacuation centres.

block-time published-time 11.29am AEST

Cyclone Pam has now turned its attentions to New Zealand, where the north island and the Chatham Islands archipelago are experiencing strong winds, heavy rains and sea swells. Cyclone Pam has been downgraded from the category five storm that battered Vanuatu and other Pacific islands, and any damage inflicted in New Zealand is not expected to be on the same scale.

So far, Gisborne in the north-east of New Zealand is worst hit, with some 40 people evacuated from their sea-level homes, and all schools closed. The port is closed and ferry services cancelled.

According to the MetService, there was around 200mm of rain in Gisborne overnight, and 130mm today. Hundreds of people are currently without power.

Satellite image of Cyclone Pam over the North Island. Gusting up to 145 kph at Hicks Bay at the moment. ^EB pic.twitter.com/8WEFBauqAy

- MetService (@MetService) March 16, 2015

Radio New Zealand has live coverage here for those wanting in-depth updates from the region.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.33am AEST

block-time published-time 11.16am AEST

Encouraging news of progress being made in Port Vila, where relief work is underway to restore power and communications in the battered capital.

Digicel says phone network almost fully restored in Vila. Still working on rest of Efate and outer islands. #TCPam

- Sam Bolitho (@SamBolitho) March 16, 2015

Power is slowly - SLOWLY - being turned on. We need to get the water pumps going because the next problem will be mosquitoes. #TCPam

- Kenny Ang (@kenny_ang) March 16, 2015

block-time published-time 11.07am AEST

Information from other Pacific islands beyond Vanuatu is still very sketchy.

Radio New Zealand International says Tuvalu has suffered "extensive damage":

NZ's foreign minister says he is looking at getting medical supplies to Tuvalu, which has suffered extensive damage http://t.co/qC07gO81ry

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

And in Kiribati, three of the southern islands have reportedly been hit:

The Kiribati government says it has reports of severe damage on 3 of the nation's southern islands #CyclonePamhttp://t.co/aRW91gMKhR

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

RNZI quotes a Kirabati government spokesman, Rimon Rimon :

We have reports coming in from three of the southern islands: some have had to move from one side, they've been residing on one side of the island and due to the wind and the waves, they had to, all the village had to relocate to the other end.

So it's affecting their lives, their livelihoods. I think it's going to take quite a long time for them to get back to normal.

block-time published-time 10.53am AEST

Vanuatu president: 'My heart hurts for the people'

Baldwin Lonsdale, Vanuatu's president, is speaking in Sendai, Japan, where he is - by coincidence - at the UN world conference on disaster risk reduction.

It was an emotional interview, in which he spoke movingly about being so far from his devastated nation and his plans to return today. He said he had not heard the full extent of the destruction:

We still have to get the full reports from the other islands.

This is a very devastasting cyclone ... I term it a monster that has hit Vanuatu.

It is a setback for the government and for the people of Vanuatu ... All the development that has taken place has been wiped out ... We will have to start again.

Lonsdale said the response from around the world to Vanuatu's appeals for help had been "fantastic".

The first priority right now is the humanitarian needs ... People have lost their properties, clothing ... the necessary items of the household that they need.

As far as food is concerned, we need food right now, but after 2 or 3 months the food [will need to] be provided for people.

He said the country would need tarpaulins, containers, medical supplies and construction tools.

Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale at the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images

The Japan conference on natural disasters was a good thing, Lonsdale said, adding that "this [the cyclone] is the reality":

We didn't know the power or the strength of the cyclone that was coming.

We see the level of sea rise ... the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ...

This year we have more than in any year ... yes, climate change is contributing to this.

He said he was keen to return home, as were colleagues who had travelled to Japan with him:

It is more appropriate and right for us to be back in the country ... We will be leaving sometime today or tonight.

I am very emotional ... Everyone has that same feeling. We don't know what happened to our families ... We cannot reach our families; we do not know if our families are safe.

As the leader of the nation, my heart hurts for the people of the whole nation.

And he asked the world to continue to visit his country:

Vanuatu is a paradise in the world ... If you want to see paradise on earth you have to come and see Vanuatu ... We will build again the new paradise.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.58am AEST

block-time published-time 10.44am AEST

Two more military planes are scheduled to leave Australia today to deliver aid and support to Vanuatu.

Despite damage to Port Vila's airport, flights have been able to land and relief is making its way to those affected. But with roads and bridges out of the capital damaged or destroyed, and communications down, it will be slow progress.

block-time published-time 10.33am AEST

Unicef, the UN children's fund, has issued an update setting out its concerns for the fate of children in the areas hit by the devastating cyclone.

It estimates that at least 60,000 children could be at risk in Vanuatu alone.

Further afield, "hundreds of children" have been affected in Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Kiribati.

Unicef says some US$3m (AU$3.9m/£2m) is required immediately to address urgent maternal and child health needs, food, water, sanitation, shelter and education.

Oxfam Australia reported yesterday that most schools in the Vanuatu capital, Port Vila, had been damaged.

Children run across muddy ground near their homes damaged by Cyclone Pam in Port Vila. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.34am AEST

block-time published-time 10.27am AEST

Good morning, this is Claire Phipps taking over from Paul Farrell.

I'll be continuing to cover developments in Vanuatu today, along with news as we have it from other islands affected by Cyclone Pam, and the latest from New Zealand.

I'll be tweeting key updates @Claire_Phipps. My colleague Joshua Robertson is currently on his way to Vanuatu and you'll be able to follow his reports @jrojourno.

block-time published-time 10.19am AEST

I'm handing over our continuing coverage of events in Vanuatu to my colleague Claire Phipps. Here's a summary of events as they stand so far:

block-time published-time 10.02am AEST

Australian Associated Press is also reporting more accounts of the damage in their latest report.

An American law lecturer working in cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu says he is astounded at the optimism shown by locals whose houses have been "wiped from the face of the earth".

Dr Wes Kendall, who works at the University of the South Pacific, said Cyclone Pam only caused relatively minor damage to his own home at Port Vila when it tore through the region on Friday.

His close friend, however, lives in a nearby village of 3,000 people who have lost everything.

"His house was wiped from the face of the earth," Dr Kendall told ABC Radio on Monday.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.23am AEST

block-time published-time 10.01am AEST

More reports are starting to emerge of the devastation in Vanuatu as aid groups survey the damage.

Alice Clements, a Unicef communications officer, told the ABC in an interview that the Port Vila province looked as though it had been hit by a bomb.

The country has suffered the most incredibly crippling blow in terms of destruction, absolute devastation and impact on peoples lives.

I'm driving through the streets of Port Vila now and it looks like the town centre has been hit by a bomb.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST

block-time published-time 9.58am AEST

The Auckland Civil Defence & Emergency Management team has posted a somewhat wry update as Cyclone Pam passed beyond Auckland.

GOODBYE PAM, REGARDS AUCKLAND @MetService radar showing rain clearing #Auckland#TCPam still affecting parts of NZ pic.twitter.com/WsGQNfsV6O

- Auckland CDEM (@AucklandCDEM) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 9.55am AEST

350 Pacific has been posting updates about the situation in Vanuatu. The group has also provided a small update on how people can help.

Pacific are overwhelmed by the number of people who are offering to drop everything and go to Vanuatu to assist with the relief work. We have this update to share with those people who have made these offers.

"People/volunteers need to be approved by Vanuatu Humanitarian Team... they will require a CV, and statement of their intent, and a host agency here in Vanuatu. send to van.humanitarian.team@gmail.com Help will be urgently needed and a call for specific skills we be going out soon.

The food security cluster urgent needs are: (check nab.vu )

Thanks to Luke Ablett for pointing this out.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST

block-time published-time 9.44am AEST

Save the Children's media manager in Australia, Evan Schuurman, has just posted that the first commercial flight into Vanuatu since the cyclone has landed.

Another plane being loaded with Australian aid for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/ZQwTzUXJQ4

- Evan Schuurman (@evanschuurman) March 15, 2015

The first commercial flight into #Vanuatu after #CyclonePam has just landed in Port Vila

- Evan Schuurman (@evanschuurman) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 9.29am AEST

Niwa Weather has also been providing some further information on the weather conditions as Cyclone Pam shifts southeast of New Zealand.

As #TCPam shifts southeast of NZ, rain will end Auckland & Northland areas as gusty wind remains. Nasty weather Gisborne/Hawke's Bay stays

- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015

Pretty nasty along the Gisborne coast, reports of sustained winds greater than 90 km/hr or nearly 50 knots = storm force winds.

- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015

Need to watch East Cape coast (Tokomaru-Tolaga Bay area) re:high tide 2:45-3:00 pm today & swell at highest. Critical watch from 1-3:30 pm

- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015

The site has also posted a useful chart that shows the highest wind speeds since midnight on Monday.

Where have the highest winds #TCPam been since midnight? Note: these are 10 minute wind speeds NOT gusts. pic.twitter.com/25yrdedEY5

- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 9.20am AEST

For some further context, Vanuatu is a small Pacific Island nation located north-east of Australia and north of New Zealand.

Vanuatu is a republic nation with a president and prime minister. A substantial portion of Vanuatu's aid has come from Australia, the United Kingdom, France and New Zealand.

It is an archipelagic state, which means it is made up of a number of smaller islands.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.24am AEST

block-time published-time 9.15am AEST

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also posted a situation report earlier on Monday morning. It provides furthers details on the assessment of damage, displacement and other information. Here are some of the key points from a summary of the report:

Tropical cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu, hitting the capital of Port Vila, as an extremely destructive category 5 cyclone on the evening of 13 March.

Winds are estimated to have reached 250kmph with gusts peaking at around 320kmph, causing serious damage to infrastructure and leaving debris strewn across the capital.

Shefa Province has been declared a state of emergency, with other areas to be determined following aerial assessments.

There are six confirmed fatalities.

In Efate, an estimated 90% of structures are either damaged or destroyed.

More than 2,000 people are sheltering in over 25 evacuation centres in Efate, Torba and Penama.

All commercial flights in and out of Port Vila are currently grounded, with only military flights landing.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST

block-time published-time 9.12am AEST

There are some also reports beginning to emerge about missing aid workers who were on the ground when the cyclone passed through.

Stuff.co.nz is reporting that a substantial number of World Vision's workers are still unaccounted for.

Two thirds of World Vision's aid workers are currently unaccounted for in the cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu.

Laura Gemmell of World Vision New Zealand said there were 80 World Vision staff stationed in Vanuatu, of which 54 were unaccounted for. She was waiting to board a Hercules aircraft headed to Vanuatu.

"We're really concerned obviously for our staff and for the people they serve."

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST

block-time published-time 9.09am AEST

We're still waiting for more word to come through from the ground. Aid organisations like the New Zealand Red Cross are playing a substantial role in the effort, along with a number of other organisations. Many of these groups are also en route now.

1200 tarps, 250 shelter kits, 900 water containers & 2 @Federation@NZRedCross aid workers for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/M4Kzj3jEzK

- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015

Waiting at the air force base in Auckland for the plane to take me and @NZRedCross aid to #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/sCL1mtV3rA

- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 9.05am AEST

My colleague Shalailah Medhora in Canberra has also provided this update on some additional comments Australia's foreign minister Julie Bishop made on Monday morning.

We understand that there are no casualties from Australia. There are no Australians among those listed as casualties, but we are ensuring that we are making contact with all Australians who we know are in Vanuatu.

About 1,400 Australians have registered with the government at this stage. But we expect that at any one time there could be up to 3,000 Australians in Vanuatu.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST

block-time published-time 9.02am AEST

Australia is a substantial contributor in aid to many Pacific Island nations. Below is a small graph that shows its contributions to Vanuatu and other countries over time.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.02am AEST

block-time published-time 8.59am AEST

The Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop announced on Sunday that Australia would be providing a substantial aid package to the stricken country. Here's a short summary of the key points from the initial aid package from Bishop's release:

An aerial photo showing the extent of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Tom Perry/AFP/Getty Images

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.43am AEST

block-time published-time 8.58am AEST

Many aid and relief workers are still finding their way to areas of Vanuatu affected by the cyclone.

Relief workers and Media wait for flights to Vila from Whenua Pai. Much needed relief supplies are being flown first pic.twitter.com/zCnZBJ13Gj

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

New Zealand has also announced it will be contributing to the aid effort. It has now pledged $NZ2.5m of funding, and is also providing assistance from the navy and airforce.

Royal NZ Airforce C130 just taken off from Auckland loaded with supplies bound for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/WrevSZiQuG

- Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 8.53am AEST

The extent of the devastation in Vanuatu is still to be determined, and we'll continue to provide you with updates throughout the day. Our Brisbane correspondent Joshua Robertson is currently en route to provide updates from the ground.

Here's his latest report from Sunday evening:

The first aid agencies to reach Vanuatu reported a scene of widespread devastation on Sunday after a huge cyclone tore through the Pacific island nation, leaving thousands homeless. Dozens are feared to have died.

Air force planes began to arrive with supplies from Australia and New Zealand as officials struggled to establish the full scale of the disaster, thought to have affected more than 265,000 people spread over 65 islands. President Baldwin Lonsdale said the "monster" Cyclone Pam had wiped out most buildings in the capital Port Vila, including schools and clinics.

Making an impassioned plea for international help from the World Conference on Disaster Risk and Reduction in Japan, Lonsdale appealed for international support. "I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy," he said in a televised address. "I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster."

Aid agencies said that more than 2,000 people were sheltering in 25 evacuation centres on the island of Efate as well as in Torba and Penama provinces after their homes were destroyed by the category-five cyclone.

block-time published-time 8.50am AEST

Welcome to our rolling coverage of events in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam tore through the island nation this weekend. We'll be bringing you the latest updates of events as they continue to develop, but here is a short summary so far:

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.21am AEST

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

New York Today: Pothole Season

BYLINE: ANNIE CORREAL

SECTION: NYREGION

LENGTH: 475 words

HIGHLIGHT: Monday: The city’s streets are looking rough, a little bit of sun, and a climate change demonstration.

Good morning on this chilly Monday morning.

On Saturday around midnight, several police officers stood looking at something on Court Street in Brooklyn.

"They're everywhere," said one officer, who was not authorized to give his name.

"They're bad."

The object of their investigation was a two-foot pothole.

We are now in high season: Thousands of potholes open up as vehicles pass over asphalt compromised by water - say, melted snow - that has seeped beneath cracked surfaces.

The Department of Transportation has filled more than 145,000 potholes since mid-December.

Nearly 500,000 were repaired in 2014.

The department began a "pothole blitz" this weekend, with 50 crews out on Sunday.

The city's guide to street defects defines a pothole as "a hole in the street with a circular or ovular shape and a definable bottom."

An "actionable" pothole is one that's "at least 1 foot in diameter and 3 inches deep."

You may report one online or by calling 311.

Follow the city's progress in repairing potholes on The Daily Pothole (complete with comic-book sound effects: "Whack! Whack!" "Whoooosh!" "Voila!)

For devotees of the subject, The Staten Island Advance has "employed" a garden gnome to sit in reported potholes as a way to track response time.

He is known as Pothole Paulie.

Here's what else is happening.

WEATHER

The sun peeks out, with a high of 50, though it will feel cooler on account of the wind.

COMING UP TODAY

Prekindergarten enrollment begins.

A symposium on raising the age of criminal responsibility in the state, at New York Law School. 8:30 a.m.

City officials voice opposition to a proposal to build a liquid natural gas terminal off Long Island. City Hall. Noon.

Mayor de Blasio hosts a news conference with Police Commissioner Bratton at police headquarters downtown. 2:45 p.m.

Advocates call for local government action on climate change, near City Hall, followed by a community forum. 4:30 p.m., 6 p.m.

The mayor is on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. 11 p.m.

For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

COMMUTE

Subway and PATH

Railroads: L.I.R.R., Metro-North, N.J. Transit, Amtrak

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking: in effect until April 2, weather permitting.

Ferries: Staten Island Ferry, New York Waterway, East River Ferry

Airports: La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

For updates throughout the day, like us on Facebook.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DOCUMENT-TYPE: News

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog

Climate change: UN backs fossil fuel divestment campaign;
Framework convention on climate change says it shares aim for strong deal on fighting global warming at Paris summit

BYLINE: Damian Carrington

SECTION: ENVIRONMENT

LENGTH: 827 words

The UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations is backing the fast-growing campaign persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel assets. It said it was lending its "moral authority" to the divestment campaign because it shared the ambition to get a strong deal to tackle global warming at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December.

"We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC).

The move is likely to be controversial as the economies of many nations at the negotiating table heavily rely on coal, oil and gas. In 2013, coal-reliant Poland hosted the UNFCCC summit and was castigated for arranging a global coal industry summit alongside. Now, the World Coal Association has criticised the UNFCCC's decision to back divestment, saying it threatened investment in cleaner coal technologies.

Several analyses have shown that there are more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if catastrophic global warming is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged. Divestment campaigners argue that the trillions of dollars companies continue to spend on exploration for even more fossil fuels is a danger to both the climate and investors' capital.

"Everything we do is based on science and the science is pretty clear that we need a world with a lot less fossil fuels," Nuttall told the Guardian. "We have lent our own moral authority as the UN to those groups or organisations who are divesting. We are saying 'we support your aims and ambitions because they are fairly and squarely our ambition', which is to get a good deal in Paris."

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sent a related message to investors in November, saying: "Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil-fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy." But he stopped short of backing the divestment campaign itself.

Many religious groups are among the 180 organisations that have already divested their funds from fossil fuels, as well as city authorities and universities. "We see the divestment of churches very much as a moral imperative for them," Nuttall said. "If their goal is relieving the suffering of millions of people, then divestment is in line with how they want the world to be."

A recent tweet from the UNFCCC said: "Divestment worked to free [South Africa] of apartheid. Now it can help free us of fossil fuels." The tweet carried a quote and image of the archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in 2014 told the Guardian : "People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change."

Divestment campaigners say their aim is to bankrupt fossil fuel companies morally, not financially. "No one is saying divestment by churches and universities will shift the market in a one-to-one way," said Nuttall. "The message now is that you can get off fossil fuels without undermining your investments. It's a different world now. You can save the world and get a good return on your investment."

Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors.

Benjamin Sporton, acting chief executive of the World Coal Association, rejected the linking of divestment from fossil fuels with divestment from tobacco and apartheid South Africa. "The coal divestment campaign is not comparable to any other divestment campaign," he said. "Active and responsible investors play a vital role in encouraging investment in cleaner coal technologies. Demand for coal is not going away."

Sporton said the divestment campaign was a concern: "There are economic and social dimensions that mean divesting from fossil fuels - and in particular coal - comes with significant risks, not least when 1.3 billion people are still without access to electricity." The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in November that global warming is set to inflict severe and irreversible impacts on people and that "limiting its effects is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication".

"Meeting the demand projected by the International Energy Agency will call for $18.5tn (£12.6bn) of cumulative investment between 2014 and 2035," said a spokesman for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. "This doesn't support an argument for divestment." Replacing coal-fired power stations with gas can halve carbon emissions, he added.

IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental issues and "the industry's principal channel of communication with the UN", declined to comment.

LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises as Australia pledges $5m in aid - as it happened;
Latest updates as emergency response teams head to the Pacific island chain to assess the damage wrought by devastating storm

BYLINE: Claire Phipps

SECTION: WORLD NEWS

LENGTH: 8581 words

block-time published-time 9.27pm AEST

Summary

It is now night time in Vanuatu and information from the capital Port Vila and beyond is scarce. We are closing the liveblog down but here is the Guardian's latest report on the devastating effects of cyclone Pam.

Here is what we know so far:

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST

block-time published-time 9.21pm AEST

Up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter, Save the Children has said.

Tom Skirrow from Save the Children in Vanuatu said:

This disaster has left tens of thousands of children vulnerable and we are particularly concerned for their welfare and safety in the aftermath of cyclone Pam.

Children are going to be very afraid, they are going to be hungry and some of them may even have become separated from their families.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST

block-time published-time 8.34pm AEST

Approximately 103,000 people affected in Vanuatu

An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross.

The aid agency says it has not yet been possible to make contact with the outer islands because power and phone lines are down.

It describes the disaster as the strongest storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.

Aurelia Balpe, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific, says:

Tens of thousands of people are still in the middle of a terrifying ordeal and we need to urgently assess the humanitarian needs and start meeting them as soon as possible.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST

block-time published-time 8.25pm AEST

David Cameron has pledged UK aid support to his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott :

PM: I've just spoken to @TonyAbbottMHR to discuss ongoing aid efforts in #Vanuatu and to offer UK support following the devastating cyclone.

- UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 8.05pm AEST

Summary

As night falls in Vanuatu, here is what we know so far about the effects of cyclone Pam and the humanitarian response:

Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:

It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu. This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.

A photo provided by Unicef Pacific of a road which was damaged by cyclone Pam on Vanuatu. Photograph: Unicef Pacific / Handout/EPA

Children stand in front of debris on a street near their homes after cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

You can read the latest Guardian report on the situation here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST

block-time published-time 7.38pm AEST

World Vision International, which has 80 staff in Vanuatu, has posted this detailed update on its work across the devastated island chain.

It says it has been able to contact only 13 of its 80 staff members so far since cyclone Pam hit:

Contact between Port Vila and other islands has not been possible yet. Penama Province was directly in the path of the storm, and the cyclone stayed over Tafea Province for approximately four hours on Friday so the organization is extremely concerned about staff and communities in those areas.

Houses in Vanuatu were particularly vulnerable to the storm, World Vision explains:

Most families on Vanuatu live in simple, thatched-roof homes that are very vulnerable to severe weather. Even for those who safely evacuated to storm shelters, they will likely return to homes that are damaged or destroyed, and crops that are washed away. Cyclone Pam was one of the worst storms the island has ever seen.

World Vision's team spent Saturday driving throughout the communities in Port Vila, assessing the situation in the capital city but communications and logistics remain difficult. Additional information is expected to continue to come in as the team is able to reach more remote parts of the country.

World Vision pre-positioned relief goods in Port Vila, Santo Island, and Tanna Island. Items include tarps, tools for repairs, water containers, mosquito nets, hygiene kits, baby kits, and kitchen sets. Early warnings throughout the week urged communities to evacuate to local storm shelters.

block-time published-time 7.20pm AEST

Latest round-up

My colleague Joshua Robertson has filed this latest report on developments today as night falls in Vanuatu:

More deaths and dire water shortages loom as part of the unfolding crisis in Vanuatu, with the first account emerging of the plight of the South Pacific archipelago's remote communities in the wake of cyclone Pam.

A pilot who flew to Tanna - an island of 30,000 people south of the capital Port Vila - on Sunday has told of more deaths, no drinking water and complete destruction of infrastructure and permanent shelters.

It was the first news from outside Port Vila, where eight people have been confirmed dead, thousands left homeless and most civil infrastructure damaged in the aftermath of the category five cyclone on Friday and Saturday.

Tanna and the less populated Erromango island had been the focus of concerns from the Vanuatu government and aid agencies, who have no means of communication with anywhere outside the capital after the worst natural disaster in the country's history.

Aurelia Balpe, head of the Red Cross's Pacific operations, said the agency had been briefed by the pilot, who said in Tanna he found "people were waiting to be heard, to talk to someone".

"What he saw when they landed and took off again was all of the corrugated iron structures were pretty much destroyed, the concrete structures had no roofs left, all the trees had been ripped out," Balpe said.

"People were saying no drinking water. He also reported two deaths but that's not confirmed by government."

A flight over Erromango revealed "a similar state of affairs" to that witnessed in Tanna, Balpe said.

This photo taken on 15 March by CARE Australia shows an aerial photo of damage caused by cyclone Pam on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Tom Perry/AFP/Getty Images

Authorities in Port Vila, still unable to assess the true scale of the destruction, were waiting on aerial surveys from an Australian military plane and the restoration of some remote telecommunications towers on other islands.

The Vanuatu lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said the government regarded the "entire population" of about 266,000 people as having been affected by the huge storm that ripped through on Friday night and into Saturday. "This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance," he said.

The Australian and New Zealand governments have announced emergency aid packages totalling $6.5m.

An Australian department of defence spokeswoman said a P3 Orion surveillance aircraft had left Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday to conduct the aerial survey, "weather permitting".

It is understood the Vanuatu government as of 5.30pm local time on Sunday was still yet to receive any of the aerial surveillance. A spokesman for defence minister Kevin Andrews said was transmitted in near real time to defence authorities in Canberra.

The surveillance plane was one of four military planes that flew from Amberley to Port Vila, the other three bearing emergency supplies, medical and disaster teams and aid workers.

Balpe said while the fact the pilot found a usable airstrip on Tanna's sheltered western side was an encouraging sign in terms of getting aid through, his account revealed a true emergency.

"The priority is getting someone down to have a look and talk to the local authorities," she said.

Red Cross already had volunteers and emergency supplies in Tanna but "by the impact that he described, those things are just a very small proportion of what is required", Balpe said.

Local residents sit outside their damaged homes surrounded by debris on a street after cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

While motorists in Port Vila queued more than an hour for petrol at the solitary fuel station that was open, a landslide and the destruction of several bridges in the city's east made travel outside the capital virtually impossible.

Australian expatriate Kenny Ang, who sheltered from the storm in the northern Efate town of Havannah, told the Guardian he had swum across a river and borrowed a friend's car to make it into Port Vila.

Ang said he saw "entire villages decimated" on his journey to the capital, where the extent of damage was equally shocking.

"We saw people on the side of the road and they're trying to rebuild in the aftermath but obviously it's going to take a long time before anything gets fixed," he said.

"We're currently in a queue that's taken one hour to get petrol from the one station that's open. I think it's going to take half an hour to 45 minutes to actually get petrol.

"People are waiting in line with containers and barrels to fill up to get to where they want to go."

Ang said from Havannah he could see the islands of Moso and Lelepa, "normally a luscious, rolling green, have been stripped bare" by the cyclone.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST

block-time published-time 7.08pm AEST

Reuters has more comments from Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, who is currently in Japan.

He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Sendai, Japan, where he was attending a UN disaster recovery conference, that he fears the impact from a devastating tropical storm will be "the very, very, very worst" in isolated outer islands but damage was still being assessed.

Lonsdale said most houses in the capital Port Vila had been damaged or destroyed by cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm:

People are finding shelter where they can live for the night.

The state of damage is still being assessed, we do not know exactly the extent of the damage ... The number of casualties I do hope will be minor.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST

block-time published-time 7.01pm AEST

Piecemeal reports are arriving from further-flung parts of Vanuatu as relief workers make their way slowly beyond the capital, Port Vila. Roads are difficult to travel and communications slow or non-existent, so it is laborious work:

Some areas appear not to have been as badly damaged as had been feared:

Good news: #VanuatuRedCross spoke w/ Torba volunteer Benjamin Brown on #Hui island, houses ok, banana trees & casava crops damaged #TCPam

- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015

Tanna, which was close to the heart of the cyclone's path, seems to have suffered badly:

@aureliabalpe says a pilot who who landed on Tanna island in Vanuatu's south has reported widespread destruction and 2 deaths.

- Liam Fox (@liamfoxabc) March 15, 2015

And Humans of Vanuatu reports that:

Teouma bridge is gone, blocking access to the most affected areas of Efate.

block-time published-time 6.54pm AEST

A new video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, a local NGO, shows the havoc wreaked on people's homes on the islands: roofs torn off, possessions shattered and scattered:

ADRA Vanuatu : devastated homes.

block-time published-time 6.45pm AEST

'No serious looting' - Vanuatu police

Radio New Zealand International news reports that all police officers across Vanuatu have been called into action:

Vanuatu's Police Commissioner says all officers have been recalled from leave as they prepare to mount a massive operation.

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

Vanuatu's Police commissioner says while there haven't been serious cases of looting, Police will cordon some parts of Port Vila tonight

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 6.29pm AEST

Community group Humans of Vanuatu reports the almost total destruction of the power infrastructure.

In a Facebook post, they report:

Power crews are working around the clock to remove downed lines. I have not seen a single undamaged line in two days.

We're talking about rebuilding the entire capital's power grid.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 6.29pm AEST

block-time published-time 6.22pm AEST

'Lack of urgency' on climate change, says World Bank V-P

As reported earlier, Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, is, by coincidence, at the UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, from where AFP sends this report:

Despite ominous predictions of mass devastation in cyclone-wrecked Vanuatu, policymakers at a UN disaster meeting in Japan do not seem to understand the pressing need to tackle climate change, the World Bank warned Sunday.

A state of emergency has been declared in the impoverished Pacific nation, where dozens are feared dead after one of the most powerful storms ever recorded smashed through. Aid agencies have spoken of "grave fears" over the scale of the human tragedy.

But Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, said there appeared to be a disconnect between policy and the increasingly-frequent weather-related disasters the world is suffering.

"I worry that a sense of urgency and a sense of shared ambition is not at the right level," she told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan.

"It's hugely ironic that this storm should hit Vanuatu while we are all here. If we truly care for those people, we have to respond," she said, referring to the need for environmental commitments.

"I think we have to hold ourselves accountable and at least voluntarily we should have targets" on emission reductions from the Sendai conference, she said.

The conference comes ahead of COP 21 talks scheduled for December in Paris, at which countries will try to thrash out agreements on cutting greenhouse gases.

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who will chair the meeting, told AFP Sendai could act as a springboard to success later in the year.

Kyte told AFP:

I don't think I would say climate change caused [Cyclone] Pam, but I would say the fact is in the past three or four years we've seen category fives coming with a regularity we've never seen before.

And that has some relationship with climate change. It is indisputable that part of the Pacific Ocean is much warmer today than in previous years, so these storms are intensifying.

We may have helped communities become resilient to the kinds of storms we experienced in the past, but resilience to a storm with wind speed of up to 300km per hour - that's a whole new intensity.

The UN development bank chief, Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, said it was "impossible" to protect against natural disasters without addressing one of the root causes:

Unless we tackle climate change on the global level we are making the task of building resilience to disasters almost impossible.

block-time published-time 5.55pm AEST

Night is falling in Vanuatu now, with much of the on-the-ground aid effort likely to have to wait until light tomorrow. The C17 aircraft that flew out from Brisbane this morning has just returned, having dropped off its supplies of aid. More planes will be heading out tomorrow.

This image of Port Vila this evening comes from Colin Collet van Rooyen, Oxfam's country director there:

OxfamInVanuatu: Port Vila right now. Beautiful regardless of what #CyclonePam tried to do to it! Viva Vanuatu. pic.twitter.com/6squkCklua

- colin (@Colincvr) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 5.36pm AEST

Following the arrival of military planes earlier today, some food and other aid is being distributed in Port Vila, as the pictures below illustrate.

So far, only the capital is accessible for humanitarian workers - there are reports that roads out of Port Vila are blocked, and bridges torn down.

Aircraft have been sent out to record aerial imagery from more remote islands in an attempt to assess the damage there:

Red Cross personnel handling donated food to use as relief from Cyclone Pam, in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Vanuatu Red Cross/AFP/Getty Images

block-time published-time 5.21pm AEST

New Zealand is upping its financial and logistics support for Vanuatu in the wake of cyclone Pam, AAP reports.

The foreign affairs minister, Murray McCully, on Sunday announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday.

A New Zealand defence force C-130 Hercules transported eight tonnes of supplies and an initial New Zealand team to Vanuatu on Sunday and two more flights will be sent on Monday.

Air Commodore Kevin McEvoy said the Hercules carried first aids kits, tarpaulins, water containers, chainsaw packs and generators.

Specialists from government agencies and the New Zealand Red Cross were also on board the Hercules.

"Pacific nations such as Vanuatu are our friends and neighbours and we're happy we can help at times of need," he said.

With the main airport being closed to civilian transport, the Hercules load would make a real difference, he said.

There are 163 New Zealanders registered as being in Vanuatu.

Cyclone Pam is expected to cause severe weather problems for the northernmost past of New Zealand itself as it passes nearby overnight on Sunday/Monday.

Here is @NiwaWeather 's most recent forecast for #TCPam at 6am showing wind and pressure pic.twitter.com/hFqfhK9fbw

- Auckland CDEM (@AucklandCDEM) March 15, 2015

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST

block-time published-time 5.05pm AEST

Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, has told the BBC that "most" of the population of his country are homeless in the wake of cyclone Pam.

Lonsdale said the cyclone had destroyed most of the buildings in Port Vila, including schools and clinics.

The president was - by coincidence - at the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, where he told delegates:

I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy.

I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster.

Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale during the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura / Pool/EPA

block-time published-time 4.45pm AEST

This brief report from Aurelia Balpe, head of the Pacific office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, suggests that the remote islands of Tanna and Erromango in the southern part of the Vanuatu island chain have suffered catastrophic damage:

1st report private fly-over Tanna&Erramngo, trees uprooted, no corrugated iron structures standing, no roofs on concrete blds, no hl #TCPam

- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 4.40pm AEST

Cruise ship operator Carnival Australia says it has donated $150,000 to Save the Children Australia towards the relief effort in Vanuatu, and says it will be sending fresh water and building supplies on Legend, its ship sailing to Luganville. The second largest city in Vanuatu is "largely unscathed", it says.

Can do cruise people. @CarnivalOz Jennifer Vandekreeke loaded car with freshwater & delivered to Vanuatu bound Legend pic.twitter.com/AX7QZmbLWT

- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015

@CarnivalOz continuing to work with @savechildrenaus with plan for building materials to be carried on Carnival Australia cruise ships.

- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 4.27pm AEST

New Zealand prepares for Cyclone Pam

Although New Zealand is not in the direct path of cyclone Pam, its northern areas are expected to bear the brunt of some severe weather as the storm passes close by.

The government has warned people in the northeast of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Hawkes Bay, as well as outer islands including the Chatham Islands, to take precautions.

NZ civil defence minister Nikki Kaye said:

I've been advised that New Zealand is not in the cyclone's direct path, but we're still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas as it passes by. Other areas may also experience effects such as increased sea swells.

Our thoughts are with those in countries such as Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, which have been badly affected by the cyclone. New Zealand is providing appropriate assistance to our Pacific neighbours.

Although I'm advised that Pam is losing strength as it heads south, MetService has forecast severe rain and wind in affected areas.

Local councils and civil defence teams have spent the last few days informing communities and working with relevant agencies to prepare for potential severe weather.

My message to New Zealanders living in affected areas is to make sure you have good preparations in place. This means having enough food and water and an emergency kit on hand. Also, secure outside objects that could blow around in high winds.

We are treating this event seriously. Although we're not on the direct path of this weakening cyclone, we are still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas.

The New Zealand government has pledged $1.5m to relief efforts in the Pacific islands.

Here's the 8am satellite image showing TC Pam north of New Zealand. Latest warnings at http://t.co/EI1S89fXlX ^JL pic.twitter.com/rjyUg8ar0f

- MetService (@MetService) March 14, 2015

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST

block-time published-time 4.11pm AEST

AAP is reporting that health is now a major concern in Vanuatu, where power outages have hit the main hospital.

"We have heard that the generator at Port Vila Central hospital is no longer operational," Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said on Sunday.

This not only affected patient care but also temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines, which need refrigeration.

Collet van Rooyen said it was one of the problems that came up at a meeting between the high commissioners of Australia and New Zealand and Vanuatu's top officials at the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) on Sunday.

Water sanitation and hygiene at the shelters as well as the need for temporary mortuary facilities also emerged as major concerns at the meeting, Collet van Rooyen said.

block-time published-time 4.09pm AEST

Oxfam Australia reports from Port Vila in Vanuatu that the cyclone has caused massive, widespread damage.

Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said:

At least 90% of housing here in Port Vila has been badly damaged; the kids have nowhere to go to school; there is no power at the hospital, which has also flooded in parts; and damage to the state mortuary means we need a temporary mortuary set up quickly.

Clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies are also a major issue for those left homeless and also those in evacuation centres, where there simply are not enough toilets or clean water for the amount of people in those facilities.

With extra help arriving on the Australian government plane today we now have a team of 10 people working on this emergency response, and there is a lot of work to be done.

Oxfam Australia's executive director Helen Szoke said:

It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu.

This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.

The Oxfam Australia page for donations to help those affected by Cyclone Pam is here.

block-time published-time 4.03pm AEST

Here is the full statement from Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, about the cyclone Pam relief response for Vanuatu:

Today I announce that the Australian government will provide an initial package of support to Vanuatu, as it responds to the devastation inflicted by Tropical cyclone Pam.

This support responds to a request from the government of Vanuatu. Australia stands with Vanuatu, our close friend and partner, at this difficult time. Our thoughts and sympathy go out to all those affected.

The initial package of assistance from Australia will include:

A first contingent of Australian officials and supplies arrived in Port Vila at approximately 12pm (local time).

Australians with concerns for the welfare of family and friends in Vanuatu should first attempt to contact them directly. If unable to do so, Australians can call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 (option 6), or +61 2 6261 3305 if overseas.

Foreign minister Julie Bishop in Perth on Sunday. Photograph: Angie Raphael/AAPIMAGE

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST

block-time published-time 3.56pm AEST

Help is coming from further afield, too, with France the latest nation to weigh in with offers of assistance:

France will deploy a Navy frigate from New Caledonia loaded with helicopters and relief supplies for neighbouring Vanuatu.

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 3.47pm AEST

Air Vanuatu to resume flights on Monday

Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday.

In a statement on its website, the airline said:

Port Vila airport has reopened with limited facilities. Planned flights for Monday 16 March are:

NF11 Sydney - Vila DEP 0600 ARR 0925

NF10 Vila-Sydney DEP 1120 ARR 1515

NF ** Sydney - Vila DEP 1615 ARR 1915 [** Flight Number TBA]

NF21 Vila - Brisbane DEP 2115 ARR 2245

Tuesday flight schedules to be advised.

block-time published-time 3.43pm AEST

Charity World Vision, which is on the ground in Port Vila, Vanuatu, sends these images of damage from the capital:

Local residents look at damaged boats washed up in Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/REUTERS Port Vila Vanuatu after cyclone Pam. Photograph: World Vision/Supplied

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST

block-time published-time 3.21pm AEST

While information from Vanuatu is coming mostly from the capital Port Vila, as communications remain difficult or impossible with outlying islands, there is also scant detail from the other countries affected by cyclone Pam.

New Zealand Red Cross has this update from its spokesperson in Tuvalu, Claire Shave :

Some of the outer islands have had a very bad couple of nights indeed. They've had water washing away houses, buildings, community halls, that sort of thing.

In addition, because the land is very flat they've had disturbance to some grave sites which is causing a great deal of distress.

A state of emergency has been declared in Tuvalu.

New Zealand Red Cross also reports that it is carrying out assessments in Kiribati, adding that sea swells caused by the cyclone have created further chaos.

The picture below shows flooding in Kiribati before Cyclone Pam hit.

Image provided by the Red Cross Australia on 13 March 2015 shows the situation in Kiribati ahead of cyclone Pam. Photograph: Mike Roman / Red Cross Australia/EPA

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST

block-time published-time 3.07pm AEST

My colleague Joshua Robertson is in touch with aid workers on the ground in Vanuatu. He sends these updates:

1st aid shipment to #Vanuatu by sea expected later on Sunday from Fiji: Oxfam's Colin Collett van Rooyen

- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015

CARE's Tom Perry just landed in #Vanuatu on Aust military plane. From on high east of Port Vila looked "flattened".

- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015

Two routes out of #Vanuatu capital Port Vila blocked by landslide on one side and bridge down on another: CARE's Tom Perry

- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 2.53pm AEST

What we know so far

Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST

block-time published-time 2.42pm AEST

A New Zealand military aircraft has just landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu:

Royal NZ Air Force C130 arrives in Port Vila #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/SQL2C5Fuyg

- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015

And further assistance is on its way from Auckland:

. @NZRedCross staff at busy in our Auckland warehouse preparing more relief for the #cyclonePam response in #Vanuatu

- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.42pm AEST

block-time published-time 2.39pm AEST

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has just finished his press conference. He did not address cyclone Pam or the relief efforts, instead focusing on plans to tackle illegal firearms, and proposed higher education reforms.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST

block-time published-time 2.32pm AEST

Summary

Reuters has filed this round-up of developments so far on Sunday:

The first shipments of aid headed for Vanuatu on Sunday as authorities declared a state of emergency and global relief agencies geared up after a powerful cyclone tore through the vulnerable Pacific island nation.

With winds of more than 300 kph (185 mph), cyclone Pam razed homes, smashed boats and destroyed crops as it struck late on Friday and Saturday.

The official count of confirmed deaths was at eight with 20 people injured. But those numbers were almost certain to rise as rescuers reached the low-lying archipelago's outlying islands.

Vanuatu's National Disaster Management Office said the government still had no word from outside the capital.

"Our communication link is still down," said Paolo Malatu, a relief official at the office. "We haven't got any information from outside Port Vila."

Witnesses described sea surges of up to eight metres (26 feet) and flooding throughout Port Vila after the category 5 cyclone hit. Satellite images showed a menacing spiral of storm covering virtually the whole archipelago.

A Nasa photo of cyclone Pam on 13 March, showing Pam's wide eye just east of Vanuatu's islands and thunderstorms wrapped tightly around the centre. Photograph: Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team / NASA / HANDOUT/EPA

Thousands of people were homeless, many left standing stunned in the wreckage of their homes. Flash floods brought more misery in Vanuatu and neighbouring countries.

President Baldwin Lonsdale, at a disaster risk conference in Japan on Saturday, appealed to the world to "give a lending hand". He was trying to reach home on Sunday.

Red Cross officials said the first aid flight, a New Zealand military Hercules aircraft carrying tarpaulins and other emergency supplies, was cleared to land on Sunday as Port Vila's airport partially reopened.

A UN team was also due in Port Vila on Sunday with members drawn from as far away as Europe. Britain, which jointly ruled Vanuatu with France until independence in 1980, has offered up to £2m in assistance.

Aid officials said the storm was comparable in strength to typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed more than 6,000 people, and looked set to be one of the worst natural disasters the Pacific region has ever experienced.

Offers of help have poured in from around the world, but with communications down, information and access will be major obstacles.

Aurelia Balpe, regional head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Reuters communications were a huge problem and Vanuatu's medical system was poorly equipped for such a large-scale disaster.

"The country mostly relies on first aid posts and the supplies in the clinics are probably just antibiotics and pain relief."

On Sunday, Pam was moving away to the southeast, and New Zealand's northern regions were preparing to feel its effects. Authorities there were warning the public to prepare for damaging winds, heavy rain and massive seas.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST

block-time published-time 2.15pm AEST

This video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, an NGO working in the disaster-hit island chain, shows a family sifting through the wreckage of what was once their house. It had withstood two previous cyclones.

Video from Port Vila, Vanuatu, after cyclone Pam hit. Credit: ADRA Vanuatu.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST

block-time published-time 2.09pm AEST

'This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever'

My colleague Joshua Robertson sends this latest report on today's developments:

The first glimpse of the true scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam could come from overhead surveillance from Australian military aircraft, according to a senior government minister.

Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu said there were fears for the level of destruction and loss of life across the country, with communications outside the capital of Port Vila still non-existent on Sunday.

Regenvanu downplayed suggestions by an aid agency that the toll in Port Vila alone could hit 50, saying it was "probably less than 10".

However, he said the government regarded Vanuatu's "entire population" of about 266,000 as having been affected by the category five cyclone that struck the archipelago on Friday night.

"We don't know anything about the rest of the country but the cyclone affected all of the country, it started right up in the north and went all the way south," Regenvanu told the Guardian after an emergency council of ministers meeting.

"This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance."

The government hoped aerial surveys would be carried out with the help of two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane.

It was not clear when satellite imagery from other countries which the United Nations said would help the Vanuatu government map the scale of disaster will be available.

A private tourist operator, Vanuatu Helicopters, was also set to help with the aerial surveys and the urgent task of re-establishing telecommunications towers on other islands, Regenvanu said.

"Unfortunately we can't communicate with anyone outside Port Vila so there's no way to assess what the situation is," he said.

"We're hoping the first aerial surveys will be going today."

Preparing the airport in Port Vila to receive more flights is one of the government's priorities, with suggestions that commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, a major constraint on aid efforts.

You can read the full report here.

block-time published-time 2.05pm AEST

The ravaged airport at Port Vila, Vanuatu, is a priority for repairs to allow further flights to reach the stricken island chain.

Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu has said that the runway - which was flooded at the height of the cyclone - has been cleared sufficiently to allow military aircraft to land. Radio New Zealand International News reports that "the control tower and navigation equipment are out of action and there has been significant damage to the international terminal".

Pacific Island Living magazine says a key priority is to restore lighting at the airport in order to allow commercial flights to resume.

block-time published-time 2.02pm AEST

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is due to hold a press conference shortly to address the response to cyclone Pam. We will have live updates on this blog.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST

block-time published-time 1.49pm AEST

A C17 aircraft has taken off from Amberley RAAF base in Brisbane, carrying a defence rapid response team to Vanuatu:

A C17 departs w cargo and rapid response crews on board 2 help repair Vanuatu's airport. #CyclonePam@7NewsBrisbanepic.twitter.com/DqgyrA6BdG

- Katrina Blowers (@katrinablowers) March 15, 2015

A C130 aircraft has also just left from Richmond.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.52pm AEST

block-time published-time 1.45pm AEST

An initial group of 10 personnel is now flying from the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre ( @NatTraumaCentre ) in Darwin, the first to be deployed from Australia. They will spend 72 hours on the ground in Vanuatu to treat the injured and assess the scale of further assistance needed:

NCCTRC deployed to Vanuatu. Rapid assessment team and an initial treatment team. #CyclonePam

- NCCTRC (@NatTraumaCentre) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 1.32pm AEST

The World Bank is trying to rush financial assistance to the people of Vanuatu, AAP reports. The bank said it was looking at every possible avenue and working with partners to send support.

Given the intensity of the event and reports of severe damage, it is exploring a rapid insurance payout to the government of Vanuatu under the Pacific disaster risk financing insurance program.

World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Sunday:

Vanuatu is ranked as one of the world's most at-risk countries to natural disasters because of its vulnerability and exposure to cyclones.

Cyclone Pam is a devastating reminder of the risks of disasters, and we will be working closely with the government to provide any necessary support.

block-time published-time 1.29pm AEST

'Neighbourhoods severely damaged beyond repair': UN report

ReliefWeb, part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reports :

Tropical cyclone Pam has impacted the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu creating serious damage including lost homes, road damage, and power and communication outages.

It says a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team is due to arrive in Port Vila on Sunday evening, adding:

People in Port Vila are wandering around sleeping wherever they can find shelter.

Standing in the Beverly Hills area of Vila you can see 360 degrees all over the city because everything is knocked down.

All neighbourhoods near the airport and the airport itself are severely damaged beyond repair.

People in Vila are boiling water as it is unsafe to drink from the tap. People are worried about water supplies and food shortages due to destruction of gardens.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST

block-time published-time 1.08pm AEST

'45% of Tuvalu population displaced by Cyclone Pam'

Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu says 45% of the population has been displaced by cyclone Pam, Radio New Zealand International reports.

It quotes the prime minister:

Forty-five percent of the population of Tuvalu, most of whom are on the outer islands, have been affected, badly, severely affected.

We are worried about the aftermath in terms of hygiene and supplies of essential materials like food, medicine and water.

This image provided by Plan International Australia, shows a family taking shelter as flood waters moved inland on 14 March on the island of Tuvalu. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST

block-time published-time 1.02pm AEST

As hoped and expected, more aid flights are due to begin landing in Port Vila:

Relief flights from New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia are expected in Port Vila about now #CyclonePam

- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015

A team of 10 humanitarian workers are set to fly out from Darwin, Australia, imminently. The group includes five doctors and nurses who will work with medics on the ground to provide emergency health care. There will also be rapid response workers who will make fast assessments of the situation on the ground in Vanuatu in order to coordinate further assistance for the disaster-hit island chain.

Vanuatu's lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, has told reporters that just one ward of Vila Central hospital is still functioning.

block-time published-time 12.53pm AEST

Two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday morning are the first foreign assistance to arrive in Vanuatu:

RAAF aid on the ground in #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/sk3SXTJ7eK

- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015

Aid efforts could be severely hampered by the ongoing closure of the airport at Port Vila. Commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, although it is anticipated that aid flights will be able to continue to land.

block-time published-time 12.41pm AEST

Care Australia sends us these images from Port Vila, Vanuatu, of the devastating effect of cyclone Pam.

The charity has a page here for donations to the relief effort.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST

block-time published-time 12.22pm AEST

The Australian Red Cross has just issued this latest update on its relief efforts:

#CyclonePam update: 28 evacuation centres now open in Efate, Vanuatu

- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015

200 #redcross volunteers going door-to-door to check on Vanuatu families after #CyclonePam

- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015

Prolonged rains and heavy winds expected to continue for five days in #Vanuatu after #CyclonePam

- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015

Immediate priorities after #CyclonePam : first aid, food, safe water, shelter. Our appeal: http://t.co/LCt8OwaKwg

- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015

The Australian Red Cross has a page for donations to the cyclone Pam emergency response; you can find it here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST

block-time published-time 12.18pm AEST

No reports of Australian casualties: Bishop

It's not possible at this time to confirm casualty numbers, Bishop said, but there were no reports of any Australian casualties.

She said Tuvalu had announced a state of emergency in response to Cyclone Pam, and Australia will be sending emergency supplies there.

Assessments are still going on in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

block-time published-time 12.17pm AEST

Australia announces $5m 'life-saving package' for Vanuatu

Julie Bishop, the Australian foreign minister, has been speaking about the response to the disaster in Vanuatu:

We are working to assess the extent of the damage both in the short term and long-term recovery efforts.

Bishop announced an emergency package of $5m from the Australian government. This will go to Australian NGOs, particularly the Red Cross and other United Nations humanitarian partners, she said.

There would be Australian support for up to 5,000 people in the form of food, water, sanitation and shelter. The government would also assist in providing medical experts, search-and-rescue personnel, and disaster relief experts, Bishop said. It would also assist in organising travel for UN disaster assessement teams.

Australian military aircraft have already left for Vanuatu this morning, she confirmed, with one plane carrying out reconnaissance and supplying imagery from across the islands.

block-time published-time 12.08pm AEST

Chloe Morrison, Vanuatu's emergency communicator for charity World Vision in Port Vila, has just been talking to ABC News. She reported that she has seen Australian planes arriving at the capital.

Port Vila was, Morrison said, "absolutely flattened":

The place that was once a tropical paradise now looks like hell on earth.

The immediate needs are for the people of Vanuatu - a lot of those in isolated communities and islands have been cut off ...

People are going to need access to clean water, to food and to shelter.

World Vision still has members of its own staff in Port Vila still to be accounted for, she said.

Even though we had a lot of warning a bout Cyclone Pam ... it was absolute pandemonium.

block-time published-time 11.57am AEST

This graphic shows the predicted path of cyclone Pam through the heart of the island chain. Communication with areas away from the Vanuatu capital Port Vila are currently poor or non-existent in the wake of the storm:

Predicted path of cyclone Pam across Vanuatu.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST

block-time published-time 11.51am AEST

My colleague Joshua Robertson has been talking to key people in Vanuatu about the rescue response.

Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu told the Guardian it was "a major disaster" just before he entered a council of ministers meeting to endorse a declared state of emergency and consider the government's next steps.

Regenvanu said there were great fears for the scale of destruction and loss of life in other provinces amid a dearth of information in the wake of the category five cyclone on Friday night.

We definitely know that Erromanga and Tanna got the eye of the cyclone, whereas we missed out - and if this is what missing out means, I don't know what happened to them.

But we don't know, there's no communications.

There are unconfirmed reports of entire villages being wiped out in the northern province of Penama.

Care International Vanuatu program manager Charlie Damon said there were credible sources indicating there could be 40 to 50 deaths in the capital, Port Vila, alone.

We have no idea how the other islands have fared and we can only assume it's horrific.

block-time published-time 11.43am AEST

Opening summary

Aid agencies are beginning their urgent response to cyclone Pam, one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded, which is reported to have ravaged the remote Pacific island chain of Vanuatu.

Vanuatu was hit directly by the cyclone early on Saturday. Unicef spokeswoman Alice Clements described it as "15 to 30 minutes of absolute terror" for "everybody in this country".

Aid agencies are currently in a meeting with the National Disaster Management Office where death tolls - although probably only for Port Vila, the capital - will be confirmed. Dozens are feared to have died, with thousands left homeless, though the numbers are expected to rise.

We will have updates throughout the day as more information emerges. I will also be tweeting key developments @Claire_Phipps and my colleague Joshua Robertson will be reporting through this live blog and at @jrojourno. Joshua's latest report is here.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST

LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2015

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS

Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises as Australia pledges $5m in aid - as it happened;
Latest updates as emergency response teams head to the Pacific island chain to assess the damage wrought by devastating storm

BYLINE: Claire Phipps

SECTION: WORLD NEWS

LENGTH: 8443 words

block-time published-time 9.27pm AEST

Summary

It is now night time in Vanuatu and information from the capital Port Vila and beyond is scarce. We are closing the liveblog down but here is the Guardian's latest report on the devastating effects of Cyclone Pam.

Here is what we know so far:

block-time published-time 9.21pm AEST

Up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter, Save the Children has said.

Tom Skirrow from Save the Children in Vanuatu said:

This disaster has left tens of thousands of children vulnerable and we are particularly concerned for their welfare and safety in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam.

Children are going to be very afraid, they are going to be hungry and some of them may even have become separated from their families.

block-time published-time 8.34pm AEST

Approximately 103,000 people affected in Vanuatu

An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by Cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross.

The aid agency says it has not yet been possible to make contact with the outer islands because power and phone lines are down.

It describes the disaster as the strongest storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.

Aurelia Balpe, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific, says:

Tens of thousands of people are still in the middle of a terrifying ordeal and we need to urgently assess the humanitarian needs and start meeting them as soon as possible.

block-time updated-timeUpdated at 8.34pm AEST

block-time published-time 8.25pm AEST

David Cameron has pledged UK aid support to his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott :

PM: I've just spoken to @TonyAbbottMHR to discuss ongoing aid efforts in #Vanuatu and to offer UK support following the devastating cyclone.

- UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) March 15, 2015

block-time published-time 8.05pm AEST

Summary

As night falls in Vanuatu, here is what we know so far about the effects of Cyclone Pam and the humanitarian response:

Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of Cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:

It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu. This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.

A photo provided by Unicef Pacific of a road which was damaged by Cyclone Pam on Vanuatu. Photograph: Unicef Pacific / Handout/EPA

Children stand in front of debris on a street near their homes after Cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters